


Day  of The Locust Blossom

by chicating



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2017-11-02 09:29:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 22,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicating/pseuds/chicating
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sort of a cast change for the middle seasons of Buffy, in an alternate world where Raylan Givens got some more...book-learning.This part is gen but there might be some ships in later chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Meet-Cute

"Ladies," Dr. Walsh's new T.A., rumored to be a graduate student in abnormal psych or criminology from Kentucky or somewhere, touched the brim of his hat as Buffy and Willow filed out.

"I have to admit," Willow murmured. "I kind of love it when he does that."

"It's not awkward? Because of...you know." Buffy still hadn't found the words for the whole coming out drama with Willow, and it was sometimes painfully obvious. Not quite as bad as being all "Wow, they have colleges in Kentucky," with Stretch over there, but close enough.

Willow stuck her chin out in a modified Resolve Face. "Lesbians can be ladies, I think. Maybe I should ask Tara."

"God, Will, don't ask Tara that! She barely talks to me as it is...after that she'll probably hate me."  
"She doesn't hate you...she's just shy."

"I've got a question about the reading...catch you later?"

"Sure...but don't think I don't know what you're doing."

Buffy approached the desk where Raylan had spread fifteen essays on heredity and environment. Which, to be fair to Dr. Walsh, was probably the place in psychology where he felt the ground beneath his feet, so to speak.Much less slippery than the id and superego and whatnot.Although his id definitely noticed the cute blonde in the halter top.

"Riley, right? I was wondering if you could help me out with number four of the Discussion Questions...."

Even with her toothpaste-commercial smile, it gave him a start to hear his immediate predecessor's name out loud, though he tried not to show it. His mother had always said "Least said, soonest mended," despite living with Arlo all those years. Maybe she should have asked a few more goddamn questions, at that.”I’m sorry about that… Raylan Givens, at your service.” Buffy couldn’t be sure, but she thought he was considering tipping the hat again.She couldn’t decide if that was polite or strange, so she just settled for “You’re not from around here, huh?”

“Was it my lack of a tan or lack of a goatee that gave me away?”  
Buffy laughed, a simple, uncomplicated sound that put Raylan at ease that she knew nothing whatever about Dr. Walsh’s secret projects and was just the sort of sunny, simple girl that would take his mind off all the troubles he brought from home.She was damn near as sexy as Ava Crowder, but without Ava’s naked confidence in her own attractions….well, she could be almost as sexy as Ava.

“Let’s just call it a combination,” Buffy replied.

“Well, you’re quite right… I’m a recent graduate of the University of Kentucky.”  
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Buffy blushed.  
“Um, okay,I realize that I’ve only been in California a few months, but I wasn’t aware that being from Kentucky required condolences.”  
“Not at all…it’s just that the way you said that was kinda…tragic.”


	2. The Beginning of Fear Itself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raylan, still struggling with his place within the Initative,starts to suspect Buffy is more than she seems--just in time for the frat-house Halloween bash.Off-screen character death. Raylan POV.

"You all right? Raylan asked." You started out with so much to say in class...I mean, it's only been a week--"

"I'm all right...what happened to Riley, anyway? Willow met him in the bookstore and she said he was all enthusiastic and stuff."

Raylan rubbed his chin thoughtfully “I think he went back to the Midwest.” He left out the part where Finn went back to Iowa in a pine box and he never said “Boo,” though the thought nagged at him. How could it not, him sitting in Finn’s very desk chair, doing his job. But if he said anything, he wondered what would happen to the rest of the Initiative men, chosen very carefully from the lower end of America’s non-existent class system.No easy gigs with security firms for them. Dr. Walsh wanted young men who were hungry for things a meal plan couldn’t provide. And it sure enough kept him quiet, even when he swore to himself he’d never let injustice go unanswered again.He knew technically, Finn had volunteered, or at least, signed off on all the drugs and endurance testing, but, somehow, seeing a co-worker turn blue right in front of you beat the shit out of all the releases in the world.It would be simpler to go home and start a little crop. Except for the plant in the barracks breathing its last.No self-respecting reefer farmer could forget to water a spider plant. And he had to admit it..he liked learning about people, why they did the stuff they did. To be totally honest, Raylan isn’t sure he believes all that stuff about Hostiles and this area of California being some sort of hotbed of demonic activity, but he did best when he had a mission and could work like hell at it.

“Well, if I had somewhere to go back to,” Buffy said. “I’d think about it. I almost envy him.”

“Too much fun or not enough?”

“A little bit of both actually.”

“Look, I know you’re running behind, but you could catch up pretty easily if you work at it…I was a Marine once…persistence is part of the package.”

“Is that why you want me to go the party?”

“Nah…not trying to be a Hall Monitor from Hell…it’s just part of my work-study thing to keep things calm at dorm parties…it’d be nice to go with someone I know. The persistence thing just shows I know whereof I speak. You know?”

“Yeah, I guess… one night won’t kill me, right?”

“It will have to go through me first.”  
“Has anyone told you you’re a little…intense?”

“Not in those words, but yeah,” Probably her biggest problem was that Professor Walsh put essay questions on the midterm and Buffy’s brain bounced around like a hummingbird drunk on nectar. She was lucky, not to carry the world on her shoulders.

“We’ll both try to lighten up before the party…it’s Halloween, it’s a slow night, anyway.”  
“I’m sorry?”

“You know, I’ll never get any work done with the noise on the floor.”

“Right…see you at eight then.”

“Sure…you know it’s a costume party, right? I’m gonna have to go home and pull something together at the last minute…you can just, like, rent a horse.”

“Not after the last time, I returned it late. Rent-a-Nag will never accept my custom again…I could always go to Rent-A-Stud, but that gets confusing after a while.”

“Naturally.See you then.”  
Raylan made a phone call in the hall. Already, costumed students rushed past him like he was invisible.

“Raylan Givens, calling from the land of no-fat milk and honey…how they hangin, son?”

“About like usual…listen, I have a question about my thesis, Art.”

“Sure, you do. On a Saturday night. And a Saturday night that’s also Halloween. Tell me another one.”  
“Well, I also…kinda met somebody.”

“Good for you…realign her chakras yet?”

“Art, where do you get this stuff?”

“I don’t exactly know, but I read somewhere California folks are partial to it.If I were you, I’d use a condom.”  
“Art…Christ!”

“Humor me, Raylan. I’m stuck in the land of meatloaf on Wednesday and sex on Saturday. Also, Tim isn’t here to listen to the latest peachy-keen reasons why you need to misuse university equipment to do your own research.”

“Ok,” Despite himself, he had to smile. “I can take a hint…this is the last time ever.”

“I think you’re confusing me with somebody trying to be subtle…better get this over with…what’s her name, Hef?”

“Buffy Summers. Like the season, not like Suzanne.”

“You either like this girl or all that sunshine they got out there is making you pussified.”

“Don’t start…”'

“That whole ‘Beggars can’t be choosers’ is a new thought for you, isn’t it?”

By the time he got there, feeling foolish in even his minimal costume, the frat house was swarming with buzzed revelers.Buffy looked adorable in her Riding Hood costume, but she looked kinda confused when she saw him with a black mask on his face. “What are you?”

“The Lone Ranger…you know, “Who was that masked man?I already had the white hat.”

“That should be good…in case…”

“ In case what?”

“Nothing…something that happened last year. Did someone offer you chocolate today?”

“I had a Snickers in the dining hall, but it didn’t come with an engraved invitation that I recall…what’s up?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said lightly, and she almost fooled him. “Just an expression.”

“Really?”Now she had his antenna up, which was maybe a good thing, because every time she talked about chocolate, he pictured her mouth and had those thoughts again. Wrong ones. Especially if he didn’t plan on shitting where he ate.

“Ask my friends if you don’t believe me…”

Miss Willow greeted him more warmly than expected, which was nice, but Raylan had his eye on the other friend, who seemed nice-looking but kinda…squirrelly.  
“Asking whether somebody’s had chocolate is a California expression, right?” Buffy asked.

“Sure…major expression…we’re eventually hoping to have it upgraded to a colloqualism, eventually…if we can get past all the red…cool costume. Very retro-manly.” Xander said.  
“Thank you kindly.”

“Look, dude,” Xander was slurring a bit from the beer.”I know I just met you, but do you think I could, you know, use that?” He doffed an invisible hat. “Thank you kindly…I already feel more confident and mysterious.”

“You’ll never pull it off.” Buffy advised. Raylan wondered if they ever….

Xander tripped on his shoelace. Raylan decided they hadn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This kind of got darker than I expected.


	3. Fear Comes Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raylan faces his greatest fear and gets support from an unlikely source.I do depict domestic violence in this chapter...not graphic, but may trigger a sensitive soul.

"Touch her again, and I swear, I'll kill you."

Suddenly, instead of the phony mysticism of the Halloween party, and wondering where Buffy got to(damn, she moved fast for such a tiny thing) Raylan found himself in the old kitchen. His mother was alive, with a swelling eye and cut lip. A cold part of his brain thought the old man was slipping...it was usually not the face. Just "falls" and "bad backs" that went on for three days and kept a loving son from holding his mother close.  
"You'd never have the stones." Arlo taunted, smelling of shine, old sweat, and larceny. Pretty much as always.

"You'd better hope I don't. That's all I'm gonna say...anything after that, I can say to the sheriff. He's always been real interested in you." Raylan remembered being real little and being praised for his quick hands...until he got to third grade and school got to him, Arlo had thought he had the makings of a fine junior shoplifter. After that, though, there'd never been much between them.

Arlo took another swig from his jar. "The boy's not even mine."

"Oh, Arlo," Raylan's mama moaned. "How could you say such things..."

_Because it's drunk o'clock, Mama. Because he always says it. Because he's a bastard and he thinks everyone else is, too...who cares?_

Raylan, straddling the line between tad and man(he could tell from the quiver in his voice) spied his mother's cast-iron frying pan in the sink. Push come to shove, he'd grab that thing and bring it down till he saw daylight. If his mother didn't protect the old buzzard. Even now, she was trying to be a peacemaker. Even so, he damn sure grabbed that frying pan and swung it like batting practice. Scarier still, the thought that Arlo's twelve-gauge was starting to have more boner potential than Ava in that little yellow bikini...he wasn't really a shot, yet, but you didn't need to be with a twelve-gauge...one flick of his finger and there could be little bits of Arlo all over this whole place. The thought was, like, hypnotic, and the power of it made his hands shake. He laid the pan down on his mother's kitchen table.

"Raylan, baby, it's all right...really, your father's hand slipped."  
"Goddamn it, Mama...it's not all right!"

And then, the strangest thing of all happened...he was standing in a puddle of spiked punch and smashed punch bowl, red sugary stuff almost up to his knees while he snuffled on the shoulder of an undergrad in a bunny suit. "In my heart, I killed him."

"I can assure you," Bunny Girl told him, all bossy. "That's usually not how it works. Without some kind of enchantment, anyway."

He didn't know what to say to that so he just watched his tears stiffen the fake white rabbit pelt. Bunny Girl watched him curiously, didn't pat his back, or offer him a tissue, or any of a thousand sweet little things he half-hoped and half-feared she would, but he didn't really want to leave the softness of the bunny suit behind, either. He stepped back, just a hair, thinking _I'm a poet and I don't know it_  
Suddenly, he heard a chainsaw roar into life, and a man with glasses waved him through a hole in the frat-house wall. He wanted to follow, but he didn't feel steady on his pins, even now. "I'll get him out," Bunny Girl promised, and Raylan thought he heard the man say Oh, dear Lord, before shrugging and disappearing again. "That's Giles."  
"I'm sorry...I don't know what got into me. I don't usually let go like this..."

"You said that...it's boring. Dear me, when a man breaks down, there really are a lot of fluids. And not really the ones I might expect...it's very interesting. Even if it is ritually-generated."

Raylan blew his nose on the handkerchief in his pocket, and straightened up, feeling more like himself, even though he was gonna have to throw out these jeans. "Happy to help, I guess? Give me the suit and I'll have it cleaned."  
"Heavens, no, I don't care about this horrifying old thing...you have to understand...in my work, I'm not usually around for this early stage...by the time I see a man like you, you're speaking in tongues or strapped to an anthill."

"Oh, dear God,"

"Now, don't go making me all nostalgic just cause I took an interest. As pretty as you are, it's not going to happen...I'm interlocking with Xander now. Even if the modern pattern is more inclined toward serial monogamy, I think twice in a week is a little *too* serial for me to be a nice girl...I'm not a Viking anymore. Two hundred and fancy-free."

She was many sandwiches short of a loaf, but he supposed his nether regions had a question. "Interlocking?"

"You know...copulation, intercourse, fornication...if you want to get all dramatic about it. And I think you do. Wow, you're all red now...would you mind telling me how that affects blood flow to your penis and testicles?"

"Yes. I would mind that...I would mind that tremendously with every rational fiber of my being, Bunny Girl. And some of my not-rational ones...fuck if it hasn't got all hot in here, too!"  
"Too bad."

" I reckon. But here we stand. One question, though...has Xander ever...interlocked with Buffy? Even on like a...friendly-type basis?"

"Friends can interlock?"

"Well, okay, it ain't like I'm endorsin' it, you understand..." the dream or what-have-you had thickened up his accent to the point he expected to pull biscuits and hayseeds out of his shirt pockets...what was that? "But, yeah, friends can have chemistry, or the moon is right-- it happens sometimes...it's, like, the way we're made."

"Humans."

" Yeah, so, did they?"

"No, I think not. I'll smite him if he does."

"No, you won't...you were too decent about me crying on your shoulder."

"It's still sticky...with saline and mucus."

"Well, interlock me, Bunny Girl...it's been a long damn night. Now I'm gonna go climb through Mr. Giles' hole in the wall, take a cold shower, and sleep this off and forget this ever happened  
"To redirect blood from your penis."  
"I told you...we're never discussing that...no man likes to feel like an experiment, darlin'. It's just not seemly".


	4. Culture Shock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raylan's stealthy background unearths some surprising facts about Buffy.

Raylan had mostly chalked up the events of that Halloween party to alcohol, mixed with something transitory and demonic(He planned never to discuss it, but he hoped Dr. Walsh and the guys had stomped the shit out of it.) He'd almost shaken it off like a nightmare after a hard night of drinking, but then he saw her again. Buffy, looking fresh and lovely, and absolutely dominated by the yogurt machine. He realized he hadn't been paying attention to the guys' lunchtime chatter. Suddenly, it was as if he felt, rather than seeing, two pairs of Initiative eyes following his. "I would so hit that," Forrest told him.  
.  
“I think she’s too much for you,” Raylan suggested. “But be my guest.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to step on your toes…bros before hos.”  
“Don’t call her that.”

“He wasn’t.” Graham said. “He was just making a joke…a bad joke, but still. Personally, I’d be more worried about the intimate relationship she seems to be having with chocolate/vanilla swirl.”  
Because Buffy had squirted the yogurt all over her hands, and despite his every romantic instinct, Raylan was reminded of the phone call he got the night before, he stayed silent.  
“You sure know how to pick ‘em, Raylan Givens.” Art told him.

“I haven’t picked anybody yet, sir, but I’m guessing something came up in my background check.”

“You’d be guessing absolutely right,”

“Well, you know, I’ve been thinking about that…speeding tickets or underage drinking aren’t really a big deal to me. And the only reason I’d worry about a shoplifter is she might dump me for Arlo.”

“At least you’re over it,” his thesis advisor said lightly. “That’s the important thing.”

“Ok, now I know that there’s something you’re just dyin to tell me, so spit it out.”  
“Well, in addition to the high schools, plural, she had some kind of mysterious role in the torching thereof, don’t worry, though, buddy. There’s just two, maybe you can chalk it up to some kind of experimental phase. Like a nose ring, or kissin girls… I don’t know why they say people in LA aren’t friendly…that principal couldn’t say enough about the million ways he hoped your Miss Summers would end up under the jail…we had quite a chat about the permissive nature of the juvenile justice system, wherein he made several noxious assumptions about my level of racial tolerance based on the place of my provenance…I’m telling you, Raylan, the South’s made its mistakes, God knows, but the rest of the country’s lucky to have us to blame…otherwise, they’d have to look in the mirror.”

“You had this conversation about *Buffy* Summers…blonde, pretty, no bigger than a minute…”

“The very same. Look, Raylan, you gave me the photos and stuff your secret soldier boys took…there’s no mistaken identity here. She was a cheerleader too, it was a real shock to everybody when she snapped.”  
“ I…kinda wasn’t supposed to do that. If Dr. Walsh finds out…”

“Color me shocked. At least now I know it’s nothing personal…I was debating a change in antiperspirants.”

“You always smell fine to me, Art.”

“Now, that’s just cruel, Raylan Givens, makin’ with the sweet talk and being half the country away… you’re a cruel tease.”  
“Ha, ha, but, Art, I know she didn’t snap.”

The criminologist turned serious. “You willing to bet your life on that, son?”  
“Sir?”

“I swore I wouldn’t say anything about this other part, cause, Lord, you’re a grown man and incredibly smart, and if some barely-legal firebug love is what it takes to get the pressure off, then maybe you should get you some flameproof underwear and go to town.”

“Art?”

“I’m getting to it.”

“What would this story sound like if you hadn’t decided not to say anything?”

“I know, but I know you’ve got a vacancy in the advice department…I wouldn’t feel right.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a fatherless child. And she’s not exactly barely legal…she’s twenty-two.” Raylan lied.

“Ok, what am I worried about? You like your pyromaniac mental patients squarely above the age of consent…well I might as well spit it out. Your girl Buffy was once charged with murder.”  
“No! Who of…”  
“Mother’s boyfriend. But this is the weird part… and you know how folks in police stations like to talk,so, take this with a grain of salt, but not only weren’t charges filed but this Ted fella was found never to exist.”  
“Schroedinger’s vic…interesting.

“Raylan, be careful.”

“You know it.”

It seemed like simple advice, back in the barracks, but it was a different thing watching her stand in line in the student union, chocolate smearing her wrists…he had to admit, he’d thought of her so much the night before, he’d barely slept, and some part of his brain said “ Hell with it,” At least he wouldn’t be the only one with a secret anymore.

“I’m going over there,”

“Fucking finally,” his Initiative brethren said.


	5. The Dirty Part

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy, Raylan, a hatchback, new love, and a secret revealed.

_"You can have a good time in a car,"  
"We're still talking about driving, right?",_

Well, yes and no. Before Raylan even knew what he was doing, he was borrowing Graham's little hatchback, telling himself it would be a way to combine patrolling and getting to know Buffy better. He kept thinking that up until the point that they knew each other almost as well as two people could.They kept saying it was a mistake, but they kept coming back to the other’s eager lips, even as Raylan risked injuring several vital parts of his anatomy on the gearshift. “Last time I made out in a car,” he whispered. “Either it was bigger or I was smaller.” He was still enjoying himself either way, but somehow he had to point that out. He touched the scar on her neck.It was raised and if he didn’t know better, it looked like a…there he was again, bringing his work home.”What happened there?”

“Long story…Fourth of July, barbecue fork, you do the math.” He’d like to tell her he’d have all night to listen to her stories, whatever their length, but his legs were cramping, and the moon was rising…he might have to start patrolling soon.

“I’ve never done this in a car,” she says, face flushed, eyes almost green, tiny girly underpants(pink enough to make him feel like a dirty old man) lying in a puddle on the car's floor…he keeps waiting for her to tell him it’s gone too far too fast,but this seems like something else. Like she is making fun of him. 

“Go on!” He tells her. “You went to high school, didn’t you?” _And maybe burned it up.,_  
He asked himself later if he might have said it if she wasn’t making him feel so good, and steaming up the windows so hard he would barely notice if a whole crypt of hostiles came up demanding all his blood. Most of it was headed for his nether regions in any case. Someday he’d feel guilty about that; as it was, Professor Walsh was pissed at him for letting the bleached-blond hostile escape. He wasn’t the only one, but sometimes rank meant taking the blame. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted his hat on the dash, where he put it when things got so hot and heavy.He remembered the first time she touched him and she said “You’re so *warm*. Later on, he could kick himself for being such a wiseass, but at the time, it struck him as her own little way of making a joke.  
“Okay, Buffy, it occurs to me that I haven’t heard dirty talk in quite some time, but shouldn’t ‘long’ and ‘hard’ be in there, too? Enormous, however, is strictly optional.” Not his best joke, but he’d expected a smile. A real one, not the closed-mouth prom queen special he eventually got.  
“No…it’s true. My boyfriend was…older.” Raylan savored the little catch in her breath as his fingers found the right spot.

Raylan could picture him and the hand that was not on Buffy clenched into a fist almost involuntarily. “Married?”  
“Something like that. We were kind of…star-crossed.”

Because he had been there, he doesn’t say much after that. They stayed close together, until, finally, as Raylan feared, there was an ominous rustling in the trees. “Stay there!” he ordered, sweet nothings forgotten in the hit of adrenaline.

“No, it’s okay…I’m not that far from the dorms..I could just walk.” 

Buffy picked up her purse and began rifling through it intensely. She tensed as the rustling continued, closer this time, and showed a lot of guts as a newly formed vampire made his way through the brush. Buffy had a wooden stake in one hand and lip gloss in the other as the creature approached. Raylan’s body tensed as he grabbed his Taser. “Be right back…”

Buffy made a luscious motion, bringing her newly repainted lips together, before, quick as a shot, ramming that little old garden stake in that thing’s concert-shirt covered heart. He didn’t say anything for the next little bit, for he’d found the few vampire dustings he’d witnessed as weirdly fascinating as sprinkling salt on snails as a boy, only this time without Aunt Helen around to make him feel guilty about it. For a moment, he almost applauds, instead saying “I’ll be a son of a bitch!”

“No,” Buffy said. “That was the last guy. If you say you’re gonna call, please try, okay?”

“Why not? I think you can take me…how’d you do that?”

Buffy looked bored, and like she thought he was teasing her.”In every generation, there is a Chosen One…she alone…forces of darkness…you know. The Slayer?”  
“That’s an old wives’ tale, isn’t it?”

She stood up on her tiptoes to peck his cheek, after which he almost wanted to say “but you feel so normal!” but he didn’t. Either cause he’d fallen hard or cause he didn’t want to think where that stake could end up next.

“Well, as you can see, I’m nobody’s old wife and I am she. Her. One of those, anyway.”


	6. Something Brown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Male bonding's just different in Sunnydale.

It went fine between Buffy and Raylan until she literally kicked him in the junk.Admittedly, it was in a sparring session, so, you know, there was no malice involved, and it might have been his own stupid fault for kidding her about holding back.Not that he was a stranger to pain…he’d made it through boot camp at Parris Island, after all, and he liked to think of himself as a man of the world, therefore familiar with the uneasy border between pleasure and pain, but this was something else again.  
It hurt, and it pissed him off and he didn’t like even the faint whispers of Arlo-thoughts that were assembling in his brain like memories of last week’s nightmares. Things like _Control your woman._ And _Teach her a lesson,_ and other such shit he’d made a boyhood vow to stay way the hell away from.”A real man walks away,” he said to himself. Maybe Helen told him that, or maybe he got it off some stupid poster at the library…he didn’t know, but Buffy wasn’t making it easy. Looking at him with her big hazel eyes wanting him to talk it out about her mystical fucking destiny as if the whole area below his waist wasn’t throbbing every time he breathed hard. “Jesus Christ!” he yelled out, relieved to be in California where a man might blaspheme in relative peace.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked again.

“Yeah, I told you, I’ll just put frozen peas on them for a few hours…I’m reasonably sure you didn’t neuter me, although I guess that’d be tough luck for you, too, huh?” he tried to smile.

She responded a bit more than was called for when she kissed his forehead and said “The toughest…” like he was some weekend warrior who jammed his fingers playing racquetball. “Just let me know how I can help you deal.”  
He rose from her mother’s couch with relative difficulty and said “You know what, Buffy? I think I’ll ‘deal’ better(All of Sunnydale talked weird like that…if he lived to be a hundred, which seemed depressingly likely given his brand-new status as a eunuch, he would never really understand them.) “if I go spend some time in a dark room with a bunch of strange men who don’t even know I have testicles…wait, that sounded wrong. But I’m going to go to a bar, and I’m gonna drink way too much of something brown, and I’m gonna get sloppy and maybe puke in the parking lot. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Sounds like a jam-packed evening,” Buffy said. “But it doesn’t sound like dealing.”

“Time-honored method in the Holler. Well, okay, minus the gun fights, but I’m not feeling one hundred percent.”

She looked serious enough to ask him to stay so he said “I’m kidding.” Though he knew he wasn’t.  
Sunnydale didn’t have that many bars of the dark and anonymous kind Raylan preferred, so he wasn’t all that surprised when, a couple strong drinks later, he spotted Buffy’s, well Mr. Giles, sitting in the corner with another Brit that Raylan totally didn’t like the look of.There was something in the man’s eyes that said he would do anything,given the right opportunity. Raylan didn’t know if that look truly repulsed him, or just made him homesick, but he tried to put it out of his mind, especially as the alcohol started doing its work.

“Mr. Giles, I really wanted to thank you for what you did in that frat house. I’d like to think I’d done the same, if my emotions hadn’t got the better of me.”

There was no mistaking that Giles looked uncomfortable. Whether it was the praise itself or the fact that it came from him was the part that was hard to make out.”Really, quite all right…it’s all in a day’s work for a…conscientious librarian.”  
“No, not at all. I know what you mean to Buffy, and especially now, since we’ve taken our relationship to the next level and all…”

Rayne’s mouth twisted in a mocking smile. “Oh, come now, Ripper…don’t be so modest.This bucolic young man was trying to pay you a tribute…it’s not like they’ve been thick on the ground since the Council made you redundant. So accept it graciously, even if this young man does have terrible taste in bits of totty.”

Then there was an uncomfortable silence. It was so quiet and still that, not only could Raylan feel his injured groin through the protective covering of Jack Daniels, he could count the individual throbs.  
Rayne looked at the both of them like a man in deep thought, at least until he lingered on Raylan’s back until it seemed his eyes would burn through the TA’s cheap t-shirt and Raylan finally felt like he understood what they were talking about in the Women’s Center…he felt objectified. And he did not care for it. “Unless,” Rayne said. “the story is ever-so-much more exciting than all of Jethro’s tiny hints would have us believe…it’s not like you to hold out on me, Ripper.”

“Look, Rayne, I don’t think I like your tone. I’d advise you to be civil or shut up.” He was prepared to do what he had to, but not for the way his voice quivered when he said it.” I think I’ve been more than patient, seeing as you are new to our shores and all, but these insinuations are…not appropriate.”

“Did he really say ‘new to our shores’? Honestly, Ripper, you have the most shocking taste these days.”

Until that moment, Raylan would have taken bets that “Ripper” was some kind of joke nickname, like naming a fat man “Tiny” or a grim one “Chuckles”. He might have kept on believing that until, the librarian, with a suppressed rage that Boyd Crowder might envy, grabbed his countryman’s wrist and squeezed, his face unreadable without his glasses.”Yes, Ethan, do go home. But don’t be a stranger. You know I’d love to thrash you again.” This Ripper lived up to his nickname.

“Damn,” Raylan said. And, just to be safe, he switched to Pepsi as Rayne mumbled something about lack of cell reception and the markets in Taiwan.

Giles cleaned and replaced his glasses. “I’m terribly sorry about that. Mr. Rayne is…difficult.”

“Difficult, like the one part of your past that haunts you no matter what else you do? And you owe him and you hate him…well, then, Mr. Giles, I swear we have that kind of difficult in Kentucky, too, and its initials are Boyd Crowder.”

“Does he worship chaos, too?”

“Near as I can figure.”


	7. Connections

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Characters getting together in old and new ways.

After the ultra-disastrous body-switching thing, Faith supposed she got a decent ride out of Buffy's cowboy(He seemed to like to be abused...if they were friends, Faith would talk to Buffy about that...ultimately, he might get tired of vanilla superhero love. But, they weren't friends, so that would just be B.'s problem somewhere down the road. Speaking of down the road, Faith had ducked the CoW assholes and begged somebody at the airport to put her on a plane to anyplace, pronto, feeling like she was trapped in some fucking Journey song. But she must have sounded wicked desperate because it worked.Except now she was on her way to Lexington, Kentucky with only a little of Joyce's money....and, well, sex appeal and her superpowers. And she kind of remembered that this girl she went to juvie with knew a guy from here, if she was willing to drive for a little while to see him. She wasn't exactly willing, but she was standing on the corner of Stranded and No Choice so she promised all kinds of entertaining things to the yokels to get them to drive her into the Holler.Of course, they wouldn't get anything, besides a little pleasant friction up against the gear shift, but by the time they figured that out, she hoped to be making bank for this Crowder guy.She fended off several locals with her darkest “Don’t even think about it, Gomer,” expression and made a careful, yet confident way toward chez Crowder.

“I’d like to see Boyd Crowder, please,” she told the bodacious blonde who answered.

“What do you want with Boyd?” the blonde said, but she stepped back a little and said “Nice pants.”

“Thanks…do you think I could see him today?” It felt weird talking to someone who not only got her number, but played her song back, bluegrass-style.

“Well, I’ll tell you, girlie. It don’t look likely.Boyd, as far as I know, is on his way to California. And he didn’t even ask me to come. I’m just good enough to clean the bathroom, play lookout, and, if I’m real lucky, get him off.Sometimes this life of crime’s just like the hair salon. Only I don’t have to sweep up nearly as much.”

“Well, there is that,” Faith said. “But don’t worry about it. California’s not that great.”

The blonde looked serious then. “Legal troubles?”

“Yeah, well, something like that.”

“You don’t have to tell me. Legal troubles are kind of traditional here. And despite my little hissy fit before, I am generally the soul of discretion. Boyd calls me that. But I always wanted to travel. “

“I can imagine.”

“Are leather pants the style in California?”

“I think I have some in my bag that’ll fit you perfect.”  
***  
All of the rest of the Scoobies were surprised when Raylan looked at Tara and said “As I live and breathe, you’re Fiona McClay’s girl.Of course, she was Fiona Morgan when I knew her. Man, I had such a crush on her. Looking at her actually hurt for about half a year.”

Tara flushed. “Oh, I’m sorry.  
”  
“Don’t be. Now that I’m older, I can accept she had a right to like someone else.”

“How did you know that…I was, you know?”

“Well, I heard there was a daughter, and if you’ll excuse me, you’re her spitting image. But you have the McClay chin. I could spot that chin in a line-up…not that I would have to…the McClays are good folks, a mite severe maybe…”

Raylan couldn’t miss the cloud that came over the girl’s face. “You could certainly say that,” she said and tried to laugh.

Raylan wished he’d never been a boy on the baseball team with a broken heart, who followed Fiona out to the woods to see what she liked better than she liked him, and was surprised to find Fiona, not with some point guard or boy from town, but just out there in the woods with a bunch of Mags Bennett’s cheap candles talking to herself. When he saw her pencil fly, he’d been afraid. So he did what he’d been taught and made fun. It took the heat off him with everyone, even Arlo. But the Holler was small, and pretty soon, even people on the wrong side of things like the Givens and the Crowders crossed the road when they saw Fiona coming, which left her feeling like she needed to wash her sins away with Benjamin McClay, who was so much older and more sanctified.  
“I’m sorry,” he said at last, “that I didn’t write when your mother passed. Aunt Helen said y’all came out to California, but you know, small towns and their rumors.”


	8. A History of Violence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens to Maggie Walsh in this 'verse. Note: there is implied violence.

"I could give you a reading, Raylan, if you want." Tara offered.

Raylan wasn’t sure he believed in such things, but he certainly owed something to this girl and her family, so he said “Thank you so much,” and let her hold his hands.

Willow, in a welter of jealousy so strong she hardly knew who she was jealous of, mumbled “You never give me a reading,” so loudly that gentle Tara glared. Willow hardly knew what to expect since the pair met and spent half of every Scooby meeting talking of places and people the rest of them had never heard of. Of course, Giles did that, too, but at least most of those people had been safely dead for hundreds of years so it wasn’t that important to keep track of their feuds or whatever. Not like the Givens and the Bennetts. Really? Prohibition? Even Anya let things go faster than that!(well, proportionally)He was definitely rubbing off on her, too. Willow was happy that she stammered less, but not so pleased about the “y’all” she heard last week. Not for herself so much as her mother. Sheila Rosenberg might champion the whole gay thing, but not so much if she thought the girl in question was…culturally disadvantaged. And Willow didn’t dare say anything. Not with Buffy and Raylan joined at the hip…there wasn’t a good time to say “Stop giving my girlfriend yokel lessons!” Not that Raylan actually *was* a yokel…he just knew a lot of them. He looked over at her, questioning, one eyebrow raised, which was, like, so annoying. Not only did he seem like he could read her mind, but sometimes? When he looked over at her that way, she…felt stuff. Definite non-gay, non-proud, bad-friend flutters in her belly. Sometimes she was just as glad when Buffy didn’t come back to the dorm at night. Shifting uncomfortably in her chair, Willow focused on her baby’s amazing aura-reading talent.

“You have recently made a major life decision.” Tara said, softly.

Raylan thought Yeah, sure, so’s everybody.

“Life and death.” Tara added. “Don’t explain…just tell me if that makes sense.”

“Yes, ma’am, it truly does.” But he wasn’t really thinking anything but how soft the witch’s hands were and how they smelled like that lotion that smelled like cherries. Maybe Buffy told her some Arlo stories.

“I’m seeing a woman in authority. And I’m seeing that it isn’t the first and it won’t be the last.No matter how much you wish…death is your gift.”

“A woman? There must be some mistake. And, death a gift? I thought getting clothes I had to grow into was bad.” He managed a weak smile, and heard Xander laugh, but somehow this reading was no longer fun.

He’d been fit to be tied when he’d gone to see Professor Walsh after Buffy got that broken Initiative tazer and he’d made no secret of it. “What the hell are you doing, you psychotic harpy?”

She’d been scared, no doubt about it. Most people were when they saw the things Raylan generally held back come into full flower, but being a cold fish by nature,she tried to hide by backing up behind her desk and looking superior. “Well, if this is that much-vaunted Southern chivalry, I’d say it’s highly overrated.”

“And I’d say that killin’ people ought to cut into your dudgeon a speck, but here we are.”

“Raylan, I told you I’m sorry about Buffy’s botched training exercise, but you can see yourself that she was resourceful and escaped.”

“No thanks to you. And don’t lie to me, neither, cause if you lie, I might do something I regret. And not just about Buffy. What did you do to Riley Finn? The autopsy report said his heart was practically liquified when he expired. Poor bastard.”  
“Go ahead….tell someone what you *think* you know…it’s your military career, not mine.”

“Here’s the thing… I know for a fact that my military career has…what-do-you-call-it, plateaued a bit. Not because I can’t fight, as you can confirm from your intense desire to either vomit or piss yourself right this very minute,or because I’m not loyal to folks that deserve it…in which case, you, Maggie Walsh, ain’t half the military man I am, for the record.”

It pleased him how quickly her face drained of color as he aimed the taser at it. “You finished?”

He smiled pretty, just because he knew it pissed her off. “Not even close…where was I? Oh, yeah. I didn’t get further in the military cause I insisted on taking all that stuff about honor and duty and so forth more personally than my COs generally required.Even my staff sargeant noticed. He said “Boy, you are the best friend anyone ever had. Or the worst enemy.Of course, he also told us we could kill people twenty-seven different ways with our bare hands…who knows what’s true.”

And, now, he was prepared to go and swear on a stack of Bibles that it was pure happenstance(or possibly her own mismanagement) that led Maggie Walsh to perform an in-person site inspection on a hostile containment pod with three times the recommended HSTs inside and a faulty security latch. Which might have been made faulty with the application of Mountain Dew belonging to one Raylan Givens. But, really, he didn’t feel comfortable speculating…how the hell did the witch know?  
Buffy thought it was a harmless debriefing. He wondered if Buffy would visit him in jail.

“It will work out fine,” Tara said. And gave his hand a squeeze before she dropped it.


	9. Investigation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because it wouldn't be a Justified fic without some file on Raylan, and because I found a spot for Tim and Rachel.

Detective Rachel Brooks was driving to the Walsh crime scene and asked her partner "Do you really think that was an accident, Tim?"

"Fuck if I know," Tim Gutterson replied. He'd been on the Sunnydale police force longer and lost an ability to be shocked.

"Well, thank you...that was incredibly helpful. I hope I have your insight after years on the job."  
"Rachel, be reasonable. This case is absolutely a no-win for us. It's on a super-secret government installation...they're probably emptying out half of Quantico right now so the Fibbies can take the credit for all of our hard work. Should we do any, that is."  
" It does sound like a job for Agent Mulder," Rachel pointed out. "Imagine that, eaten by a demon." She shuddered.

"I heard it was demons, plural. I think we're just lucky they left enough to identify."

"Yeah?"

"Just her hands and an ID badge. Which I know thanks to Monique at the crime lab so don't say anything."

"See, I told you you'd like her."

"Yeah...we've been out a couple times."

"I'm happy for you. I really am. If it was really a demon, then why are we out on this? Why not, like, Animal Control?"

"You know, a man could get a whiplash from you changing subjects so fast."

"Sorry. And what happens to the demon?"

Tim was amused. "You feel sorry for the demon?"

"No, not really. They're disgusting, but if they can't help it..."

“ I don’t know…it’s not our problem, anyway.”

“So, what do you think about the witness?”

“Givens? Seems like he shits red, white, and blue. He’s so upright it kind of makes me suspicious.”

“But you’re not judging…”

“Hey, you asked!”

“Maybe I should take this one…make sure this guy gets a fair shake.”

“You’re officially Good Cop, Detective Brooks. Congratulations. I have one question, though. What was that doctor chick…”

“You mean the late Dr. Walsh, right?”

“Yeah. What was she doing inspecting security pods when she had a whole raft of G.I. Joe types to do it for her?”  
“Control freak,” Rachel Brooks said, one eyebrow raised. “Likes to see all the I’s dotted and the t’s crossed. Like someone else I know.”

“Let’s get off of me and onto Givens,okay?”

“Great.”  
But as they pulled onto the Initiative grounds, both jeeps full of youthful commandos and what looked like FBI vehicles swarmed the area and waved Rachel off. “Ma’am,” one of the commandos, a guy so young, he still had a festering pimple on his forehead.”You can’t be here.”

For a moment she had a crazy urge to tell him that a crushed aspirin on his face would fix the pimple right up, but she was quickly joined by a tall drink of water in a cowboy hat who waved her over.”Just so we’re on the record,” Rachel said, briskly.  
“I’ve got nothing to hide,” Much.  
Rachel liked to start out confirming the basics. It generally made witnesses more secure, gave them time to talk too much and screw up. Tim thought that part was boring and unnecessary, but he and Crime Lab Monique had had way too much to drink at a tapas place the night before, so he wasn’t sure if he was speaking from professional judgment or hangover.

“Name?” Rachel asked.   
“Raylan Francis Givens…where you from, darlin? I feel I can almost sense it on the tip of my tongue.”

“Memphis, Tennessee. Now, tell your tongue to mind its own business.”

“I’m sorry… I expect I’m just a little nervous.”

“I don’t doubt it. Losing your commanding officer in…such a fashion.” Raylan could see, despite Brooks’ dark coloring, that she was almost pale.Demons really freaked her out.

 

“Yeah…mighty big shoes to fill. Mighty big shoes.”

“Some of the men on your floor report that you had words with Dr. Walsh on the night she was killed.” If she was looking for a major reaction, she didn’t get it. Just the same old Mayberry shucks, oh, golly, oh, gee, throughout.  
“I frequently had discussions with Dr. Walsh related to my academic interests.”

 

Rachel shook her head. “You called her a psychotic harpy.”

“I didn’t say they were always productive discussions."

Gutterson laughed. Rachel had a live one here.


	10. Loose Ends...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raylan helps get Giles' magic store in shape.

The investigation vanishes like a puff of smoke after the police get hustled away by an Army general with enough medals to start a brass factory. Raylan knew that cut the final tie between him and the military, and he was kinda melancholy about that(not to mention missin the Superman drugs Dr. Walsh so willingly passed out, God rest her soul.) Whenever he got too guilty about what the good doctor's last moments had been like, although he figures "unimaginable torment" about covers it, he pictures poor old Riley Finn, gasping and cyanotic, begging someone in the unit to either help him or end his misery. Keeping that thought also helps him not to miss his super-strength too much, although between all that and the psychology department being in general disarray, he's kinda at loose ends. Although Dr. Mullen at UK has been uncharacteristically understanding about his thesis.So that how it happens he's at the Magic Box(a name that never fails to make him snicker, being as how it's also the name of a very shady strip club in Lexington, and well, it's funny picturing Mr. Giles in place like that...he mostly just says "Giles'" when Buffy is around.) Xander looked almost pathetically grateful for the whiff of depravity, or maybe just testosterone, although his research sometimes tells Raylan the two things are one and the goddamn same, when Raylan told that story and started gabbing on about a dropped transmission,Jack Kerouac, and some shithole male revue in Oxnard. Raylan still doesn't know what all that's about and considered asking Buffy if her old friend weren't, you know, a mite special, or something.But before Raylan made a complete fool of himself by asking, he found out Xander is quite a hand with tools and so they spent a few days putting in track lighting to shine the right light on all Mr. Giles' mystical gewgaws. It was easy work and they chatted often, in the desultory fashion of two American males.Xander needed to fill every silence, though, and Raylan was kinda relieved to hear the little bell above the door jingle.

"Beware of Slayers bearing gifts," Buffy said, bearing a picnic basket. "Or, you know, not, since I didn't make anything in here. Mom did, and she sends her compliments."  
"Hey, baby," Raylan said, giving Buffy as much of a kiss as he dared with Giles around, doing his in loco parentis thing. Which wasn't much, damn it, since his disapproving look affected Buffy like the threat of a shotgun affected girls in Harlan County."How's your mama feeling?"

"Headache's better, but she's still a little pukey, though."

Raylan noted Mr. Giles' "God, give me strength," pose when Buffy said "pukey" and wondered if it should be redeemed for a little gratuitous tongue or a maybe a goodbye swat on the Slayer's perky ass. He was as intellectual as anyone, but snobbery pissed him off.

Buffy blushed. "I mean, nauseated."

"Okay," Tara said, "remind me when we're done here? And I'll take Joyce some ginger."  
Miss Tara hadn't stammered or done that "everything's a question" thing for some while...Raylan was just about to wonder what was up when Dawn burst through the door carrying a full paper bag and followed by two somber-assed McClays. He could tell from the determined chin, the soft accent and the even more determined absence of a smile.

"No pressure, Buffy." Dawn griped, seemingly oblivious to the two men in suits and ties standing behind her. "we certainly don't need your super-strength to carry five million cans of soda."

"Well, you get to have movie night, and I get to go patrolling. Who said life is fair?"  
"I could go patrolling."

"Hey, Little Bit."  
"For the millonth time, Raylan, please don't call me that," Dawn said, giggling in spite of herself.

"For the millonth time, you're not going patrolling."  
"Now, Buffy, I don't see why she couldn't learn on a little .22 or something. Couple of stakes...it's what I do, and I had one when I was her age." A few years later, he was winning competitions and Arlo wasn't giving him much more than the stinkeye, but he figured that was too much reality to introduce to Dawn all at once. "I'll take her out to the range myself."

"Not loving the plan where Dawn's armed."

"Maybe there's a jackrabbit-sized demon or something."  
"Yes, Raylan, will you tell her?"

"I'll think about it." Buffy said. "And then, only when he's with you..the cats of Sunnydale have enough to worry about.'


	11. Night Follows Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sunnydale and Harlan intersect.

As the McClays get closer, Raylan says "Mr. Giles... I think I'd better handle this one, if you don't mind."

Giles doesn't say anything, just sort of nods. Raylan figures a man named Ripper'd know when the shit hit the fan, no matter how particular he is about tea and scones. He wants to be the first owner of a Sunnydale magic shop to live to tell the story.

"You?" Anya blurts. "You don't even know the local tax rate. Giles, they'll be robbing us blind."

"It's 7.75%," Raylan says, smoothly, like "Any other questions, there, Bunny Girl?"Although they seem to have both silently agreed to say nothing about how they met. It was times like this made him think twice about interlocking body parts with her, though she has a cute little little shape and sometimes he wonders what she'd look like in one of Buffy's tiny tops. He's still just a man, after all.

"Anya, do stop being tiresome," Giles says, polite but with some steel in it. "I have some things to unpack in the stockroom. Let me know if you need anything,"

Letting him know he had his back. There was no way Raylan could embarrass a man like that patting his Slayer's fanny. "Why don't all you ladies, and Xander, go back there?"

"All you ladies and Xander...that gets less emasculating every time I hear it." Xander grumbled. "Will nobody think of my magical commando training?"

"I have," Raylan said. "Mine just took four years, is all."

"I...should stay," Tara says, though she looks less-than-thrilled at the prospect. "they're my f--family." She looks so pale and her eyes are so large in her face that it feels as though he did see Fiona before she passed, instead of just thinking he should. He wants to argue, but she's raised that stubborn McClay chin, the one that made them such good missionaries on one side, and gunfighters on the other, with Tara's father being uncomfortably stuck in between. "Do what you want," he tells her. "I can do the talking." When he says that, he can see the pink coming back in the little witch's cheeks, and he feels like a million dollars.

Anya bustles out to retrieve her calculator so she's the face the McClays see when the little bell jingles. "Welcome to the Magic Box. I'm Anya...how may I help you today?" Bunny Girl smiles briefly, like she got the toughest line in the play and wasn't sure she said it right.

She gets no love from watching the McClays glower. "Is Tara here?"

"Yes, but she doesn't really work here. Only Giles and I have the keys to the cases...we're the ones who can best meet your magical needs. Unless you can convince her to give you a fortune, but she's really shy. It's kind of annoying. She doesn't even want money that much."

Seamus McClay's frown deepens to a level unseen in nature and he says "We have no magical needs."

Bunny Girl's face, nakedly full of "What the hell are you doing here then?" that she doesn't try to disguise, goes a long way to winning Raylan's goodwill back. She had guts, that's for sure. Even old Seamus looked puzzled. "I just want to see my daughter." Like she sprang fully formed from his head and poor sweet Fiona didn't even push her into the world. And he didn't like the way the man seemed to spit when he said "magical,". Seemed rude in a man with witches in his family.Even worse than Raylan's own carrying tales, because Raylan was just a boy, kinda up against it in his own right, who figured he'd get to be big stuff if he knew first the McClay's place was haunted. He wished he'd been kinder about the fact that Fiona was...special.

"Hi, Daddy," Tara said, and there was a tiny jot of hope in the way she said the second word that made Raylan's heart hurt. Like in spite of everything she knows, there's a miniscule part of her that wants to believe in the good kind of birthday surprise. Maybe that's why Raylan's "Can I help you?" was a bit rougher than he initially intended.

"Raylan Givens? No, this is a family matter. Tara, tell the gentleman you are coming back to Harlan County with us."

"Was that your intention, Miss Tara? Because, if it is, everyone here will miss you greatly."

"I'd like to stay," Tara said, and he had to strain to hear, but she had her chin out in a way that seemed to brook no argument.

"Maybe while you're here,gentlemen, you might investigate some of the unique features of the Golden State...Disneyland, Universal Studios...did y'all happen to know about California's stalking statute? It's the toughest in the nation...New York's one is pretty tough too, but it's a walk in the park compared to the one they got here in Cali. I'm just fascinated to learn how it works...so, I expect y'all got some stuff to say before you head on out. I'll leave you to it."

He walked around, but not too far. Seamus whispered something to Tara that made her flinch. "It's not man's laws that ought to concern you, young man, but God's. And, for heaven's sake...taking counsel on the law from a Givens."

"It is kind of the black cloud on your wedding day, isn't it? But I got some things to say...thanks for the young man comment...it's only those who've known me for a while that see me that way. And if you prefer to handle this privately...without the law, I'm totally prepared to do that. Though I'd hate to have to. But I will, because I ignored God's law when I was a tad.Love thy neighbor, you know."

"I should have known...depravity follows my daughter like night follows day."  
"If I were you, I'd be thinking of what follows you. My judgment's not as kind as God's but it's a hell of a lot more persistent."  
Meanwhile, in another part of Sunnydale--

Jonathan, Warren, and Andrew were preparing for another in their weekly RPGs, when there was a soft rap on their window. Still halfway expecting the pizza man, they were arguing about who would provide the tip when the man, short and intense, said "I believe you are in possession of some of my property."

Jonathan was freaked by the look in the man's eyes...those were eyes that could do *anything*, and the accent itself was like, an unstated threat that they could end up buried in some swamp someplace. Or worse...Jonathan saw Deliverance. But, you know, the king stay the king, so his and Andrew's only hope was that this Crowder really dug Warren's bush-league Zuckerberg act. He was really selling, though, steepling his fingers like some kind of real-estate agent supervillain. "Mr. Crowder, or can I call you Boyd?"

"Mr. Crowder makes a nice change." Crowder said, not relaxing in the least.

"Well, then, Mr. Crowder," Warren continued. "as we discussed in our e-mail...have you all gotten broadband yet?"  
"Not at the house."

"You didn't need to make a special trip," Warren said, freaked for the first time. "But as we discussed, the kind of figure you ordered, represents the culmination of a marriage between art and science...that kind of thing should never be rushed."

"How long does it take to consummate a goddamn marriage? Not that I ever had the pleasure, you understand."


	12. Working some Magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tricking the McClay family out of their disastrous plans for Tara.

Raylan supposed it was just wishful thinking made him think some harsh words would keep Tara's family from coming back.But he wasn't sure what to think about the blonde with the eyes so much older than the rest of her face, who kept looking at him out of the corner of her eye. Maybe some old boy had done her wrong or something. "Love potions and philters are on aisle five," Raylan told her. "But I'd be careful with that stuff if I were you."

She chuckled, as they normally did when he said that. "Really? Why?"

"Because men are only human. And you already come in here looking like that. Now if you work a spell on us too, I have to complain. For the sake of my gender. Because you're absolutely taking advantage...the owner of this shop like to kill me the last time I told someone this, and she wasn't as pretty as you."(Giles did initially hate the aggressive pitch away from love spells and philters, fearing the loss of such ardent repeat business, but he supposed he made it up in sales of Confidence Cream and Sensuality Spray, both expensive items imported from France. Raylan's little banter had sold more Sensuality Spray than the rumor that spread in magical circles that Catherine Deneuve was really a hundred and forty.

"Don't listen to him," Anya told her. "He says that all the time. Although you would be pretty...if you weren't teary and gross."

"Pardon my associate's ill manners," Raylan said. "I still don't think you need a love spell, Miss..."

"It's Missus. Mrs. Beth McClay," Beth said. "I'm Tara's sister-in-law. Is she here?"

"She's probably having lunch before she starts doing readings...since she doesn't have class on Friday, it's her long day at the shop. You're welcome to wait if you would like."

"Oh, so it's true!"

His eyes narrowed. "What's true?"

"That my sister is imprisoned in the occultish lifestyle. Before we take her home to Harlan, I was thinking she should go to Ojai and have that reparative therapy done. Although. you know, it's not my place."

" Damn right it's not." Raylan said. "And you should know, much as I hate to interfere in family affairs, there is no way on God's green earth I'm letting you drag her into the desert and suck her brain out."  
"They don't suck it out," Beth said, clucking her tongue at Raylan as if he were a very naughty little boy indeed. "They just, like, purify it or something. She's not worth worrying about..she's a demon. Vessel of God's judgement.Like her mother before her,"

"Don't you say another word about her mother or I will break a lifetime of habit and lay hands on a woman."

"I could do it!" Anya said, brightly, realizing something for the first time."Xander never told me I could hit people if we had the same interlocking parts...that is really excellent. I never liked her anyway. Although this body kind of lacks firepower...I suppose I'm stuck with teeth and claws like an animal. Come, let's go outside so that I might inflict bodily harm on you, without damaging the inventory. I think even a cowardly creature like you would consider that the best-case scenario."

"Mr. Givens," Beth said, looking so weak and pleading that it cut through Raylan's anger just a speck. "I don't think I wanna do that. Let this girl bite me, I mean. What can I do so she doesn't?"  
"You could pay me," Anya said. "A couple hundred should do it."

Beth grabbed her tiny pocketbook and rifled through it. "All I've got is fifty."  
Anya considered. "Well, it's much less than I expected, but that's okay, because I don't hate you as much as he does. I guess it's a deal."  
"No deals, and I don't hate anybody," Raylan said. "Beth, are your menfolks out there?"  
"Of course.I don't drive."

Raylan grabbed a crossbow and his.22 and headed out to the magic store parking lot. "Keep an eye on her. I'll be back after a while." He had a sudden flash of himself instructing Dawn at the firing range earlier that "You don't point at anything you don't want to kill." Was he truly prepared to draw on McClay? Not unless the man forced him, like Dr. Walsh in her own way, had forced him.  
The three men in the beater had the indulged look of men who didn't eat unless there was a woman around to cut their crusts off. a notion Raylan left behind when his voice changed, except at Aunt Helen's.Even then, he discovered a tiny finicky streak that made him a natural for barracks life, that made him want things cleaner than Helen. She cooked, he washed the dishes.

When he tapped on the windshield, they expected Beth. He could tell from the way their mouths were frozen with complaints."Surprise," he said, and pointed his weapon, hoping Dawn(and by extension, Buffy) never found out. As they had previously arranged, Beth cried out "Oh, no, the demon's hurting me!"

Raylan saw her tall, handsome husband wince."I'm sure sorry about that.The last thing I wanted to do is make trouble in y'all's family.But she must have heard me worrying for Miss Tara, and decided to do something kinda...drastic. I don't know which is worse for rationality...the woman or the demon."

Beth cried out again, "Not the claws!" as Anya made ooga-booga noises.Raylan thought they were both great little actresses.

The husband squared his courage, as one would have to to face McClay in a sour humor, and said "Would it be the worst thing if Tara remains in California? It's largely godless. Maybe her powers will bring on the final earthquake."  
"What about her obligation to this family?"  
"Beth is a better cook, and more disciplined. Although you said yourself how Tara tended her mother in her final months...I just want my wife back, sir, before the demon possesses her or something." Just then, another bloodcurdling shriek from Beth. Raylan had to figure she was enjoying this chance to make a little noise for once.

"Okay, Givens," McClay said, sourly."What can we do?"

"Okay, by my count, Tara will be there any second. When she gets there, you are gonna wish her a happy birthday and tell her that you got her witchcraft all wrong."  
"What if I don't?"  
"You remember all the firearm competitions I won, right?"  
"For heaven's sake," Beth's husband replied. "my wife is in there, being subjected to god-knows-what so you can save your pride. Just do what he says."  
"You got yourself a smart boy, Seamus." Raylan said. "He must take after Fiona too."  
"I can't do magic, though. When I was little, I tried all the time."  
"You did? That's disgusting."  
"You might want to make your own travel arrangements, there, Edward. I think traveling in a car with him for days is gonna be kinda awkward.”  
“I suppose so,” the younger McClay said, his mouth grim.  
“Ok, Seamus.” Raylan said. “I’ll call off the demon, but after that, you’re on.”  
And Raylan pretended to do a spell. But it was really just stuff in Latin that sounded good and ingredients from shampoo bottles and some powder Xander found in the back. Anya really hammed it up and hit the dirt so that the “rescued” Beth could come running over and show how not-possessed she was.  
Seamus came in the store to find Tara behind the counter with the remains of a smoothie glass. “Daddy,” Tara said, shocked.  
“Daughter,”  
“Look, I’ve really thought about it and I’m not leaving California…m-my life’s here. Everything I care about.”  
“You don’t have to. I’m sure your godless ways will catch up with you, eventually. Might as well be here as anyplace.”  
And suddenly. Raylan wished he’d been more elastic about conditions where he’d be allowed to shoot.


	13. Table For Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sunnydale Trio gains an out-of-state partner in Boyd.

"Ok, y'all," Jonathan said. "We really have to step up work on the Ava-bot."

"Did he just y'all us?" Andrew asked.

"He did at that," Warren replied. "And I'm not digging it."  
"Sorry...Boyd's got me doing it."

"You still worried about Crowder? I took care of Crowder...I dazzled him with so much bullshit he'll be confused for a week."

"Despite that," Jonathan continued. "knowing the underworld as I do..."

"You pussy," Andrew said, hoping to rise in Warren's estimation. "we went to high school together...what do you know about the underworld?"  
"Excuse me...which of us here has the complete Wire box-set? You or me?"

"You," Andrew sighed. "But we all get to be beta-testers, right, Warren?"  
"Yeah, okay. But it looks like Jonathan is gonna pee his pants if he doesn't finish his stupid theory, so you know, go ahead."

"Operating on the theory that all the pieces matter," Jonathan said. "We're still very late in producing something that Mr. Crowder paid us a great deal of money for. In some subcultures, this entitles bearer to a huge chunk of our backsides."Looking back at this statement often, Jonathan wished he'd gone balls-to-the-wall and said "asses,". It was this sense of propriety that kept him a henchman, not a lack of cred. He had _mad_ cred. Straight off a Hellmouth, yo.

"I suppose we could work a little faster," Andrew pointed out. "Boyd did sound kind of pissed."

The trio headed to the workroom, where they were flanked by a naked blonde robot whose open brown eyes with no life in them gave her a corpse-like aspect, several editions of the Kama Sutra and the Joy of Sex and the Collected Works of Paula Deen.

"One of these things is not like the others," Jonathan joked, to cover his discomfort at 'Ava's' dead appearance.

"Apparently, Crowder's quite the redneck gourmet." Warren said. "Anyway, let's see what it looks like on."  
"Now?" Andrew said. "She's not wearing anything,"

He picked out a t-shirt and jeans and struggled to get them on the Ava-bot. Which would be bad enough if he hadn’t stopped to admire his handiwork.He adjusted its collar and tucked in its blouse. "You finished?" Warren asked and pressed the button on that bot's neck. "Hey," it said, with a surprisingly lifelike smile. "I'm Ava,"

"Be careful approaching on her right side," Jonathan advised. "That's the hand she uses to shoot."

“I don’t know why anyone would want what, essentially, is a sex toy with weapons capability,” Andrew replied.

Warren said “It’s not our job to have opinions. Boyd is our customer.”

“I don’t know,” Jonathan said. “I think it’s kinda…” When none of the other guys took his bait, Jonathan backpedaled. “Strange and off-putting, of course.”

“Boyd’s coming back in a week,” Andrew said. “we’d better be done.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Warren said. “Does Bill Gates worry about the techies who are waiting for the next release of Windows?”

“He might if they could blow up his factory,” Jonathan said. “I may not know as much about business as you, but I do know to make nice with the guy whose bio lists explosives three times.”

Just then, the phone in the Batcave rang.”It’s your associate from the Bluegrass State callin…how are y’all tonight?”

Warren gulped. Jonathan saw it.Actual gulpage. “How are you, Mr. Crowder…we’re doing just fine.”  
“No names on the phone,” Crowder said testily, and there was a space big enough that Boyd could have said “You moron,” if he felt like it, which gave Jonathan a secret burst of almost forbidden pleasure.

“Ok, whatever…why are you calling, Mr. Pink?”

“I think Mr. Pink died in the movie,” Andrew whispered.

“So not the point.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Boyd said, in a tone that made all three members of the trio stop short, all ears.

Warren laid it on with the junior-businessman shit again, although this time they could see his complexion was faintly green. “That’s fine, but I am going to have to charge you for work already…”

“Not like that. I still want my girl. I figure we’ll stay in Saturday night. Play us some checkers. But instead of going home, I figured we’ll make a reciprocal arrangement. I teach you the finer points of criminality…”

“Yes.”

“And Mr. Pink’s in the goddamn robot business, if I may presume. In this economy, a man has to diversify.”

“Sure,” Warren said. Jonathan had not seem him so bleached of color since the disaster of the first X-Files movie.  
“Hey,” Boyd said, in a completely different tone. “Can I talk to her?”

From where Jonathan sat, this was the strangest part. The fact that this scary and hard-nosed ex- and current con called and asked to talk to the robot like she really was his dream girl, no matter how many times the trio explained about artificial intelligence and heuristics and the whole bit. Jonathan couldn’t decide if that was funny or sad, but he gave the phone to the bot anyway, turning away as Crowder said “Hey, baby,” in a gravelly and seductive voice to a pile of plastic, wires, and microchips.

“Hey, Boyd,” the bot chirped. “I’ve been missin’ you, something terrible.”

“I miss you too…I’ll be coming to get you, real soon.”

“ I don’t get it,” Jonathan said, once they were out of speakerphone range. “Ava’s a real person, right?"

“I think so,” Andrew said. “Why?”

“Well, Boyd’s not like us. He hit his growth spurt on time and everything.”

“Lucky bastard.”  
“I know…so why doesn’t he find this Ava and bang her brains out?”  
“Maybe she doesn’t see him. We all know what that’s like.”


	14. Hero?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy reaches out for help during Joyce's illmess...Faith looks for something more

"Damn," Buffy cursed under her breath as she tried, for what seemed to be the millionth time, to get Raylan's head out of recidivism statistics, and into calling her back, and maybe, please, God, patrolling tonight? Her mom tried not to complain, but she could see that Joyce's headaches were becoming far worse. They should probably go to Urgent Care. Giles said he could stop in that night and check in on Dawn, but as a fighter? He made a better librarian. She had to have this resolved very soon or her mom would go all stoic and try to treat her pains with all the herbal stuff Tara gave her, which was sweet and all, but not like being checked by someone who knew something.She pictured Raylan's abandoned phone blasting out the opening of "Honky-Tonk Woman" loud enough to annoy the person in the next carrel but not really even denting her sweetheart's sense of purpose. Sometimes, it was great having a partner who was so single-minded(although thinking about it sometimes made her blush, but at a time like this? It really sucked. She was pretty sure it was only worry that made her curt when she said "Don't worry about it...I'll get someone else," and she wasn't even sure what she was going to do till she counted the three twenties in her pink purse...a relic of much lighter, happier days. Dawn, who despite testing into the gifted program in junior high, was chortling at "Spongebob", barely noticed when she slipped out, let alone askingto come like usual. It was a rare reprieve. Striding purposely toward the cemetery, she allowed herself a momentary wish that her dad could have been a cliche right here in Sunnydale...maybe he could have taken Joyce to the doctor or something, left her with only the *one* difficult destiny, what would be wrong with that? Despite her businesslike intentions, she felt herself beginning to well up and she was grateful for the cover of darkness. She made her way to Spike's crypt and pounded on the door. A moment later she heard something about "bloody pizza delivery" and the door was open a crack.

"Slayer...you're not Domino's. .."

"Never mind that. I hate to admit it, but I need you, Spike."

"Sheriff Matt Dillon's not getting it done for you, is he? Having a romance with his horse, or something?"

"What the hell are you talking about? And why are you getting a pizza? You don't need to eat."

"You don't need to eat pudding cups, either, but I know that you do."

"Mostly, those are Dawn's...wait, are you going through my garbage now? And when did Matt Dillon play a sheriff?"

"Your trouble, Slayer, is that you're just so bleeding young.Still, you must want...something." Spike couldn't resist laying it on, even though her not knowing what he was on about did rather puncture the fantasy. Even he had to admit, though, that American telly had come a long way since those early days. He sometimes missed his ducktail, though. Eating girls with circle pins...mid-century had been an underrated era, menace-wise. It had to be, he supposed, with three channels.  
"I need you to help patrol tonight," she said, holding two twenties out like a distress flag. "So I can take my mother to the emergency room."

No wonder she forgot to be repelled about the garbage. He had had this whole line about knowing his enemy, and recon, but he didn't need to bother now.

Buffy saw, with some surprise, that the vampire looked concerned. "Is your mum going to be all right, then?" He lunged forward, but he only took one of the proffered bills.  
"I don't know. I really hope so."

"I'd do it for free...this is just to replace my pizza.I don't want to leave *y'all* completely undefended, unlike a certain former coal miner of our mutual acquaintance."

"Stop it...I didn't come here to talk about him."  
"It's not my fault 'Fire in the hole' turned out to be just an expression, love, now is it?"  
"Don't be disgusting, Spike. For the record, I have no complaints."  
Spike seemed to be having fun then, light dancing in his eyes. "Then what are you doing standing in my bedroom?"  
"You know your crypt's only one room."  
"Lucky for you, I fancy a spot of violence...Give Joyce my love, all right?"  
Buffy doubted that she would but she promised.  
* * *  
After a few weeks in Kentucky, Faith had to admit working at Audrey's as part of the Crowder operation was no path to prosperity. More packages than stimulus, you might say. Still, it was easy work, if sometimes she felt it tested her Slayer healing to the utmost. But it felt good to imagine the Council chasing their tails, because it seemed like nobody knew this place was here. She hadn't had very much chance to talk with Boyd yet, and never alone...he was always running off to retrieve suspicious looking packages...one even looked like it had a body inside it, but she knew enough not to say anything.Ava turned out to be a crack-up, she occasionally had the chance to relieve some of what Crowder called her "baser urges" with one of the other working girls, and somehow, she had no weakness for Oxy. Life, as practiced by Faith Lehane, was pretty good. Still, something nagged at her. Maybe it was having Buffy in her body that day...she'd had a dream about that that some of her regulars would pay top dollar to hear, but still, a dissatisfaction persisted, a sense that saving her own skin(nice skin though it was), was not enough.  
After years of waiting, Faith Lehane thought she wanted to be a hero.


	15. A Good Adjustment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy gets good news, but Raylan may have to head back to Harlan County.

Raylan returned just as Buffy was getting the scoop from a soft-voiced doctor about her mother's condition. "We got the tumor," he told her. "But there could be some residual loss of function...hemiplegia, that sort of thing. But Mrs. Summers seems like a strong woman...with the right rehabilitation, she could make a good adjustment."  
"You have no idea," Buffy said, so strongly that the doctor smiled.  
Raylan's phone vibrated again. Third time in an hour. He supposed he really ought to turn it off, but it still gave him the creeps to be this popular only a little while after getting the finger from Uncle Sam. Still, he wouldn't want anyone's life support going south so he obligingly flicked it off.It wasn't till he came back to Buffy's place and was sitting watching the news with her head on his shoulder that he knew what all the messages were about. In the immediate moment, though, his mood was still cooling from having Hostile 17 jump out at them, like he hadn't a care in the world."What are you doing here?" Raylan asked, feeling his whole jaw clench.  
The vampire didn't have the sense to be scared. "You mean, besides your job? Nothing much, mate. Just figured, since this one's mum isn't about to kick off, Blondie owes me some dosh."  
"How did you know that?" Buffy asked. "We only just found out."

"I have contacts," The blond vamp said airily, trying to seem important.

"You didn't, like, do anything to her, now, did you?" Raylan asked. "I ever found out you did, there's gonna be a stake with your personal name on it."

"Do you ever say anything that doesn't sound like something out of bleeding Deliverance? Tell me the truth, Slayer, do you like squealing like a pig?"  
"Eww...Spike,"

"No, Quick Draw McGraw, I have a friend...more like a minion, at the blood bank...he's a cutter and he kind of worships me...it's almost Nurse Jackie, actually. So far as I can tell, it was plain old organic brain cancer, although the Hellmouth is kind of a magic soup. Maybe it was her cellphone, but I don't have that kind of power. Lucky for you."

"Thank you for telling me," Raylan replied.  
"It's not for you, Festus. Just wouldn't want the lady getting the wrong impression, that's all.Feel bad about violating Brian's confidence, but I'm sure there's some way a bloke like me can entertain a self-mutilating closet case, don't you think?" He smiled a perverse little smile that Raylan instantly hated.

"Doubling down on my 'ew'," Buffy said, handing over the money as if she couldn't stand to look at Spike.

"We certainly won't keep you," Raylan said, touching his hat out of habit. "Buffy, if I had known he was your next choice, I'd have damn sure patrolled with you."

"I'm just relieved that Mom is going to be okay, you know. Mostly." Although she wasn't really sure what "hemiplegia" meant...maybe she'd buy those sticky flowers for Joyce's bathroom?  
"Although, you know, he was lying about some of that stuff."  
"Why?"  
"Shit, how should I know...maybe he likes you."  
They turned on the nightly news.It was awful that they could escape their reality with others' murder and mayhem. Until, almost at the end of the broadcast, the energetic blonde newscaster said "In News of The Weird, can you imagine a whole county that couldn't speak?"  
Her fatherly co-anchor said "Some places could only be improved by that, Robin."  
"Well, that's exactly what happened in Harlan County, Kentucky, amid speculation that it was caused by coal mining."  
Raylan sat tall, and pushed buttons on his phone...he had many texts. "Long story...need help. Faith Lehane."  
"Do you know what a Watcher is?" Art. "Cause some old gal is looking for one, and she asked yours truly.Can't talk neither."


	16. Art Mullen, Robot Hunter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As an eerie hush falls over Harlan, Art faces a challenge that his life in law enforcement education have not prepared him for.

By the time that girl Faith is at his door, Art Mullen hasn't spoken in about a day and a half. Which would seem more remarkable on a day without a bank robbery in it, if you want to know the truth, but his mouth is already feeling rusty as though speech is something exotic.He'd had strep all the time when his kids were kids, but it had been ages and he swallowed just fine, with no sign of the fever that would make him and Marge both hollow-eyed wrecks.(Meanwhile, the kid would be fine again, of course.)But a whole town wouldn't have a throat infection, would it?  
It wasn't until the streets were as quiet as his own voice that the hairs started to prickle at the back of Art's neck. He supposed he could have fixed the situation with his bank account online, but he never trusted those blamed things...sometimes you still needed a person, although he wondered how he would make himself understood if he couldn't speak..would there be a run on those pens chained up in the bank?Still, as freaky as everything felt, Art and his fellow bank customers nodded at each other and waited decorously behind the ropes in the bank line.His thoughts just kind of drifted, in some line-waiting trance, when suddenly a gorgeous blonde who could be Ava Crowder’s twin and a shorter, sultry brunette cut right to the front, smile, and say “This is a robbery,” and pull weapons as bank patrons and staff alike cower soundlessly in the back.  
Art doesn’t cower…expert witnesses usually don’t.Although any kind of voice in this lengthening quiet has become creepy,it's even weirder the way the women don't take in the scene and just keep repeating the line about the robbery like they're talking about a garden party or something.Maybe they are high as kites. Art Mullen taps on the desk to get their attention, and, improbably, they smile. "Have you seen Boyd?" the brunette asks, in an accent that marks her as Northern and far from home.Art grabs his overpriced blue marker and writes "Let's keep our heads," in block letters on his equally overpriced message board.For good measure, since he can't yell, he underlines it. Last thing he needs is Crowder getting back to his old MO and blowing this bank branch sky-high.

He comes closer, and the three pairs of perfect hands tighten around thebags of ill-gotten lucre, and possibly, weapons. He can't help but notice that he doesn't smell anything. Although the view is pretty distracting, he must admit, being even at his age, just a man, he notes he doesn't smell perfume, sweat, or fear coming off the women, just the bloodless scent of new plastic. Still, they pack a punch, even after he's gotten past his natural instinct toward chivalry and swung back.Feeling roughed up and winded from the unaccustomed physical activity, he strains for a deep breath, and as he gets it, he notices how...mechanical, the tilt of the blonde's head is. When he was young, he had a hound that did that, but this doesn't remind him of that so much as his grandkids' Toy Story videos. In their grappling, he thought he felt a hollow place in the blonde's neck that wasn't where women *have* hollows in their necks and on a wild hunch he writes "BOYD!" in big blue capitals, a flourish even Raylan might appreciate.  
It takes a minute, but they do understand the written language and all three robotic beauties start doing their devoted hound dog number again, waiting for Crowder as though he's the Second Coming. Although he kind of hates to do it, and his skin is getting what he thinks of as"technology clamminess", he closed his eyes tight and presses the button on each woman's neck until they're in a lifeless cluster on the bank's floor. He motions for somebody in the bank to text the law, and until they arrive, the board says "Robots," with an arrow pointing down. "I'll be a son-of-a-bitch" he thinks, wondering when he can say it again.  
He wouldn't admit it proudly, but he gets good and drunk that night, drunk enough to feel like a much younger man, especially since his wife's out of town visiting family, but midnight finds him half-asleep in front of "Rio Bravo" on TCM. At least, until the ping of gravel against his window puts him on high alert again. He was barely following Dean Martin and the Duke, but he comes to to see a young woman in pants tight enough to barely leave anything to the imagination, getting ready to chuck a larger rock at his window. He gestures for her to stop, and then, somehow, to come in.She slides through his window without any effort at all, her cellphone giving off an eerie green glow in the darkened living room. She holds it out so he can read "I need u, pls help!" on its face.  
Against his will, he swears, he thinks "I read a Penthouse letter like that once," but he tucks in his shirt just the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of coming off a block here, and have my doubts about my action scenes...try to be kind.


	17. We All Scream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Art has an unlikely ally in his quest to serve and protect...

"Didn't you just rob me?"Art asked, in some combination of movements and hand gestures. "How the hell..."

For a moment Faith seemed cagey, as if this weren't her first rodeo at dealing with irate lawmen, semi-retired or otherwise.She smelled of musk and a few days wearing the same shirt, though scaling old guys' windows appeared to be no challenge at all. For a moment, Art Mullen discovered his lizard brain. His caveman one, or something. "i'm a slayer," Faith texted. "need a watcher."

"What about the little blonde? I thought she was the Slayer."

And then, from one perspective, the worst thing happened. Faith started to look young, frustrated, and innocent.

"Watcher=protector." Faith texted again. But instead of the screen on her phone, Art saw the pleading look in her eyes.  
"Well, shit." Art replied, feeling better having made the motions even though it was still soundless. If this was all a scam, it was a strange one. He crossed to his coffee table, almost unbelieving that barely an hour before he'd been fighting to stay awake and wondering if the John Wayne movie he'd been watching was one of the ones where the Duke died, and now...well, strictly speaking, he wasn't sure what was happening now. It would seem like a dream, only the whiskey still burned a path through his body when he drank it, despite tasting weak from the way he'd let the ice melt in it. If he was dreaming a stiff drink after a battle with bank-robbing robots, shouldn't the drink be better? He really thought it should.

When the phone rang, it jangled both their nerves. Art went forward to pick it up, because it was his house and what kind of protector would he be to leave this girl to face it herself, even though he figures neither of them could answer.

He barely gets the heavy old instrument to his ear before he hears a familiar voice." Art?" Raylan says.

Art, figuring that the separation brought by technology and space satellites would make him able to respond, comes back with a hoarse grunt like a sea lion on a nature special.

"Sorry," his student replies. "I forgot. I meant to prepare you before Faith got there, and I am on my way back to Harlan, but I've hit weather in Chicago so y'all are gonna have to do it. Faith is gonna have to go out in the Holler and scream bloody murder so everyone can get their voices back."

Art knows without her showing him that Faith is texting about the robots. Maybe they are beginning to understand each other, or maybe every conversation in soundless Kentucky was beginning to resemble some long game of Charades as the dark-haired Slayer begins to act out the robotic posture of her double from his old dinette with the slip-covers on it.  
"I don't know about the robots," Raylan admitted. " Could be a Crowder thing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this has taken so long...hoping your patience will be rewarded shortly.


	18. The Sound of My Voice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Speech returns to Harlan, and a dissatisfied client confronts the Trio.

Overall, Faith wouldn't say she's much of a screamer. Except, you know, lately, and for the right price.  
So, for a moment, she stands out in the darkness that is darker than any night she has ever been in, because she's out in the middle of nowhere, and feeling dumb. She can't get any sound to come out. "Just let it come," Raylan said, in between bursts of static, "it doesn't have to be poetry." It didn't help that she was sitting on a rock and wearing Art's wife's old flannel shirt and feeling very unlike herself.

That kind of said it all, really, Not that she had much of a chance to see who "herself" was anyway, besides "the other Slayer" whose call came too late, and the wild child everyone wanted(and usually got, let's be real) a piece of. Ex-con, magical felon, all the way back to the skinny girl who was always in the counselor's office at school because things didn't seem right at home. Big surprise, they weren't, but that's where she learned to lie. And, eventually, to drink. And treasure the mysterious skills that gave her both nimble fingers and the ability to get drunker than everyone and suffer no ill effects.When she was in tenth grade, one of the few things she remembered from actual school was a myth about somebody coming too close to the sun. She felt like that, sometimes, back then.

She sure had come back to Earth by now.Attaching herself to the Crowders hadn't worked out any better than being the Mayor's puppy dog.Faith began to scream, long and loud, and full of anger and fear.She felt ashamed of the tears that seemed to leak from her eyes against her will, but she kept screaming. Finally, there's a scuffle in the trees, and a frightening black monster in a top hat clutched what could have been its ear with its talon, and as she reached a kind of high note she hadn't known she was going to make, his head popped. Like an overripe olive. It made a satisfying squish. 

Hoarse and shaken, Faith sat back on a rock. If it weren't for Slayer healing and super-strength, she wouldn't be sure that her wobbly legs would support her, but it was another kind of power she felt when Art patted her back awkwardly and said that it would be okay. She felt tempted to make a joke, because, like many men his age, she could sense he had a crush on her, but the wiseassed words wouldn't come, for once.  
***  
"Gentlemen, I must conclude that your beta test is a failure," Boyd Crowder said, at last eye-to-eye with the three technicians responsible for making his most cherished dreams realities. "Given that it was foiled by an old man waiting online at First Federal."

"Well, Mr. Crowder, wasn't he a retired police officer?" Andrew offered. "Under normal conditions, that bank robbery should have gone off with nary a hitch."

"Are you mocking me? Because nowhere in our contract do I offer disparagement as a fringe benefit."  
Andrew opened his mouth to offer a reply, but Jonathan thought it better to interject. "Speaking of not-normal condition, I saw that nobody in your area could speak for two days. In that case, we really didn't expect you to show up personally."

"I find that level of silence unnerving. Besides, you gentlemen said yourself that I should see the Golden State in person. So, here I am. What do you have to show me?"

'I thought most people were blocked from leaving Kentucky until the CDC said it was okay." Warren said.

"Through legal channels, possibly," Crowder continued. "But I know a gentleman, chiefly employed in bringing his compatriots across the border, who's recently been shown the error of his ways."

The Trio tried to turn their sickly looks into welcoming smiles.


	19. Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Both good and evil plan for the future, as Raylan comes back to Sunny D, and the Trio faces a dissatisfied customer. Also, I think you should know, I've never used HBO Go and have no idea if it's easy to use or not.(I just think techie arguments are funny sometimes.)

"We are really going to have to do something major if we're going to win Boyd back." Warren said, looking less like the CEO of an evil robotics firm and more like a guy who cheated in chemistry, which, Jonathan remembered, he also was.

"Mr. Crowder," Jonathan interjected. "Southerners like titles."

"Whatever," Warren said. "We are really going to have to do something to demonstrate to _Mister Crowder_ that we are ready to play in the big leagues." He looked around their rec room/office and tapped a pen on the wall-mounted whiteboard.

Jonathan frowned. "Are we though? I mean, going along with your amazingly hacky baseball metaphor, I thought we'd just hang out here in the minor leagues for a bit. Maybe play for a farm team, get our feet wet...see, I can speak in generalites too."  
Andrew looked wounded. Sure enough, he was about to defend Warren again.   
"It's not hacky, it's timeless." Andrew said, with a "so there" look. "And I've already started work on the additional security patches for Avabot 3.1, since she's clearly Crowder's favorite."  
"Ok," Warren said. "But you need to think bigger."

Jonathan felt like offering his own "so there" face, but Warren continued. "At least he's involved, Jonathan. Not just heckling from the sidelines. No, I was thinking we kill someone."

"You mean, like, in World of Warcraft, or blowing up a houseful of Sims, right? Not actual murder."

"Guys like Crowder live by a harsh code, Jonathan," Warren went on, as if he'd ever seen anyone else like Crowder outside of a boxed set or weekend Lockup marathon. "It can be very hard to get in without proving our loyalty. Making our bones, so to speak."  
"You liar," Jonathan said. "I knew you had my Sopranos season 3 DVDs."

Warren had this way of acting as though he didn't give a crap, ever, that, try as he might not to respond, got under Jonathan's skin. "It's not my fault you won't embrace the twenty-first century and get streaming."  
"They're not available on streaming," Jonathan replied, trying as usual to be reasonable.

"In what universe is HBO Go not streaming?"  
"Oh, sure, if you don't mind an inferior interface..."

"You guys," Andrew pleaded. "Agree to disagree, please. Now, who are we gonna whack?"  
***  
True to his word, Raylan returned to Sunnydale, with his usual close-mouthedness about what he'd seen on his home turf. Buffy wanted to know, but any time she even hinted at pressing the issue, he just looked for another demon bar to hang in. She'd removed more than her share of claws from his body with Epsom salt before she'd gotten that little message. She wondered if it was wrong that they didn't tell each other everything in the few spare minutes she had in the day between patrolling, the online class her mom insisted on, and making sure said Mom went to outpatient PT three times a week.Sure, there was a lot of drama with Angel, but she guessed she was lucky to get it out of the way early. She would have no time to burn tragically for anyone now.

However, in her eagerness to make time for her honey and her little sis in one shot, she was actually wasting a beautiful California Saturday watching Dawn shoot things. Although she had to admit, watching Raylan teach Dawn did give her that kind of flutter that she hadn't had in a while.Dawn was actually good, at least if her prey didn't veer much away from soda cans and Raylan's beer bottles. Clearly, quick reflexes were part of the Summers inheritance even without the Slayer Destiny Playset.

Dawn fussed with a sweaty strand of hair that came loose from her ponytail. "Now, may I go patrolling?"

"We'll see."

"When Mom said that, it meant no."

'Well, she's still here, isn't she?"

"Yeah, it's like 'Survivor:Sunnydale'..." Suddenly, she turned serious. "Sometimes I wonder who's getting voted off."


	20. The Worst Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dawn faces the one unexpected danger being the Slayer's sister didn't prepare her for.

Andrew's heart gave a little jump as the Trio went out on their recon mission. True, roaming the suburbs of SunnyD was hardly like "Full Metal Jacket" or whatever, but they were, at last the brotherhood he'd always hoped they could be.  
"Are we going to take out the Slayer?" he asked, wishing he didn't sound so much like a kid waiting to hear what he would get as a birthday present.  
Warren shook his head, then ducked to minimize the crackle from the grass. "Any fool could kill the Slayer," he said, as if the thought was too small for him.  
"Plenty of them have tried, you mean." Jonathan pointed out."And they were all either magical or stronger than we are."  
"Birdy legs?"  
"No. Psychological warfare. If we kill a friend of hers, maybe we can throw her off her game."  
"Or maybe she'll go scorched-earth and kill us all."  
"We have to do something to make our case to Crowder."  
Jonathan's complexion blanched and Andrew knew that Warren had won. Even more than the Slayer, Jonathan was terrified of the glint in their Kentucky client's eye.  
"I'm in. Reluctantly."  
***  
Sometimes, Dawn thought, the worst thing in the world was getting what you wanted. For months, she'd fought hard with Buffy and Raylan to have Janice over at Revello Drive while they went patrolling and, in Raylan's words, had a little bite afterwards. But Dawn heard Buffy on the phone to Willow about the bar they went to and how it had this thing that looked like a bull, and she rode it longer than anybody, because God forbid Buffy wasn't the most perfect at everything, and she smelled like smoke, and even though it was really late, and Dawn had been asleep, she'd seen Raylan pinch Buffy's butt like he was getting a sample of grapes from Ralph's.

"It's all so ghetto," Dawn complained to her mother, while trying to seem concerned so that she might get her sister in trouble with Joyce thinking she was tattling.  
"Don't say that." Joyce, though pale and tired a lot of the time, was starting to come back to herself. " Don't be hard on your sister."

Dawn tried not to, and she and Janice had a pretty awesome sleepover overall, even if Janice liked chick flicks more than Dawn did and wanted to go to sleep way too early. Dawn was watching something scary on AMC when she heard the rustling in the yard, and noticed how weird the light from the television looked on her sleeping friend's face. At first, she thought the noise was from her movie, but when she heard it during a popcorn commercial she said "Who's there?" and grabbed her gun. Janice remained a lump under the covers. Everyone slept more peacefully than Summers women.

Despite everything Raylan had taught her, she kept it loaded.Despite everything Buffy had feared, he had told her she was a good shot. Still, she was only fifteen, and not really prepared for the bleeding figure of a young man with brown hair to be flat at her feet.


	21. At-Risk Kids

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raylan tries to help Dawn...did he just get her in deeper?

"Raylan? Something happened and it's bad."

Raylan wondered what percentage of his phone calls started that way, and figured it was larger than the average man's. Graduate school and coming west were supposed to stop it all, but, you know, wish in one hand, crap in the other, and see what fills up first. Still clinging to the hope that she had her monthly, or a falling out with that flaky Janice, Raylan answered Buffy's questioning look with a reassuring one. He was so busy being okay he didn't ask an important question: If it was something like that, why would Little Bit call him?

"There's a guy in our yard. I think he's dead. I called the cops..."

Son of a bitch, Little Bit. "I'll be right there. Don't touch anything. Five minutes, I swear." 

He turned to tell Buffy and found her with her silly pink purse slung over her shoulder and a stake stuck in the pocket.Her chin was thrust out strong as always, but her eyes looked sort of wounded. Raylan had hoped showing her a good time, both in and out of bed would giver her back some of the sparkle he'd fallen for(Although he doubted he'd said the l- word yet, unless it was in one of those moment where a man's not in his right mind.) And now this. "I have to go." he told her. "Dawn said she smelled gas.I'll just bring her to Janice's and you and I can..." he couldn't bring himself to continue the lie.  
Buffy stood up. "She's my sister."

"That's okay. Let me handle it."

Raylan tore ass to make it across Sunnydale in five minutes flat. He almost wished he'd of got the speeding ticket too, but he didn't, and true to what Dawnie said, found a way-dead college boy in the yard right next to Joyce's petunia border. The guy wore an oxford shirt with the sort of subtle stripe a guy like Raylan would never pull off, darkening rapidly from blood loss, and kind of questioning expression. Like " So this is how it ends."  
Dawn had done what she had done quick and clean. It almost occurred to Raylan to say "Nice work," but it wouldn't be seemly. Even if he would of done the same exact thing in her place, maybe especially so, given the risks young girls were under. She'd been crying so her face was pink and she kept repeating "I was scared. I heard a sound in the bushes. I didn't think...I'd just."

"It's fine, Dawnie. One thing, though. Go in, use the bathroom, and wash your hands,"  
"Raylan, I might be a murderer, but I'm not mental. I know how not to spread hepatitis."  
Raylan hunted around inside the kitchen, until he found the green canister of Comet. Trust Joyce to not let brain surgery keep her from keeping her Craftsman clean, and thank God. "Use this," he said, handing it to her.  
"Why? It's all gritty..."  
"Do it and I'll tell you later."  
Janice, who Raylan always thought had a crush on him, sat there, eyes wide as saucers, forgetting to let them trail over him as usual before she said "Raylan, my dad's a lawyer. Is that legal?"  
"Think like those hot dogs, Miss Janice. We are answering to a higher authority."  
After a moment, Dawn came out of the bathroom, drying her hands on a towel. "Don't act like your dad's some big deal, Janice. He opens businesses and writes wills for old people. It's not like he's some big consiglere or anything."  
"Could you hear us?"  
"Yeah, I can hear everything through the vent."  
This day kept getting better and better. "Raylan," Janice said, all pert and eager, 'You didn't answer my question." It was enough to make a man long for Kentucky, where he'd still be "Mr. Givens" despite the fact that in Kentucky, Mr. Givens was shorthand for "Piece Of Shit, Junior".  
Raylan took a deep breath. "Think of it as correcting a mistaken impression."


	22. Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dawn faces the law over her encounter with Warren.

The cop who comes to see Dawnie is still young, trying too hard to be tough and acting like the badge gives him an extra three inches of dick. Raylan had met his type often.

"Are you responsible for this girl?" he asked. "She's underage..I'm going to need to talk to her parents."

Raylan thought of Joyce, presumably sweating it out in water aerobics, and the call he'd made to Aunt Helen to get his mother's ring. "We're family," he said, and both the cop and a raw-looking Dawnie looked grateful, and a tiny flicker of panic burns and dies in Raylan's own chest. He'd think of that later, once Dawn was proven not to be a delinquent and all.

He rested his hand on Dawn's shoulder, and the detective's eyes narrow with suspicion again.

"Her father's in...where was it, Barcelona, Dawn?" Raylan asked.

" He was, but they moved to Seville when Carmella had the baby. He sent a package at Christmas." Raylan let that stand, as if to tell Boy Wonder over there "You see what i'm dealing with?" Dawn starts to wipe her nose with her hand, but Raylan remembers the DoubleMeat Junior and the cold Dr. Pepper he stopped for on the way up here, and hands her the paper napkin with a flourish.The cop looks up at the darkening sky and seems to decide "Fuck it," and looked at his notes. Both Raylan and the cop smother their smiles as Dawn's noseblowing turns out not to be little and ladylike as she looks. The streetlight on Revello comes on as everyone moved inside and sat at Joyce's kitchen table. Dawn sits as if she is being graded on it instead of her usual casual slump.  
"Have you ever met this Warren?"  
Dawn hiccups. "No, never."

The detective leans back so far the chair creaks and says, with the air of a man having a sudden brainstorm, "Not even ...online? One of those AOL chatrooms or something?"

"I never...well, okay, one time at Janice's house we used her sister's password, but..."

"And then you met Warren...?"

"And said what? Hang around in my bushes and scare the crap out of me? I think not."

"I don't think you're being straight with me, Dawn. Look, I understand that teasing these boys can give you a little thrill..."

Dawn gives him a look that says "You can?" and Raylan swears he wants to applaud.  
"The lady says she thinks not. Move on, please,"

His fantasy of unmasking the huge new revelation that teenagers like to talk dirty dashed, the detective affects to be the busiest man in America, fumbling with notes and papers and folders to the point that it sets Raylan's teeth on edge. He also wants to see how closely Sunnydale PD follows department guidelines for minors, so, under cover of a bathroom break, he steps away to overhear:

"You're not being straight with me, Dawn, I know it."

"Ok, it was Leticia's house. Not Janice's. I forgot. Janice had the stomach flu that weekend."  
" Not about that. If you fired the gun, how come there's no residue on your hands?"

"I'm, like, scrupulously clean."


	23. One Last Fling(part one)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raylan finds trouble at a demon bar, but it's not the kind he expects.

Raylan Givens had had a bitch of a week, and in some small way, he was looking for revenge. Not that he would allow himself to think about that, but there had to be a reason why he didn't follow Buffy and her Scooby Gang to that Bronze place and pay too much for an oversweetened cup of coffee and the heartfelt musings of some Lillith Fair reject. Or come to that, he could do his drinking a little further up the freeway, somewhere that felt a little more like home, with some country and War on the jukebox and monosyllabic conversation under the fitful glow of shorting neon. He told himself it was the Sunnydale Drunk Driving Task Force that kept him imbibing in this demon joint by the interstate. Whether he wanted to admit or not, he'd become habituated to demon contact. It was like it gave off this hum that he could hear that many humans he went to school with could not. Not that he'd been giving school his full attention, what with keeping Dawn out of juvie and fixing ten thousand broken things on Revello Drive. "I swear, Hank Summers, you chickenshit bastard, if I ever lay eyes on you, you and me are gonna habla somethin fierce." he mumbled, as he pulled into a parking space at Le Enfer Especial, a new demon joint that he hoped wouldn't be as fancy as its French name. 

However, it looked like the management was ahead of him as a scantily-clad hostess with a luminous smile offered to take his hat(He declined, but he did tip it to her.)

"Welcome to Special Hell, I'm Jen."

"Hello, Miss Jen. Are you part of what makes this particular antipode of heaven special?"

"Stick around to one tonight and maybe you'll find out." she said, a devilish little smile that set off her red-devil suit flitting across her face.

"I don't believe I can tonight, Jen darlin'. But I'm sure it would be my loss. Can I get a boilermaker please?"

"Coming up," Jen smiled nervously, and reached back and adjusted her pointy tail. Raylan took some comfort in noting that she was probably human, minus that special electricity hostiles have.  
He was well on his way to feeling no pain when a familiar face arrived, wearing a decidedly unfamiliar and sexy black dress. "Hey there, Bunny Girl." He may have been otherwise committed, with Aunt Helen's ring in his knapsack, but he was still man enough to notice that she had great, shapely legs.

"Don't call me that." Anya said. "You wouldn't believe the nightmares."  
"Oh, okay...Anya, right?"

"You know it is...don't take it out on me because I saw you get all mucusy. I never told Xander about that, by the way." she said and took a big swig of her drink, which looked red and mysterious. "Maybe I should have--it'd be good for our love life if he thought he had a bigger penis than you. Given that you are objectively more attractive...oh, Hades, what does it matter , we'll all be dead soon anyway."

"I sure am sorry to hear about that," he replied, wondering if Anya had gotten bad news from her doctor or what. "Let me buy you another round...if you're allowed to drink, that is."

She tossed her hair, which was somewhere between golden and a warm brown and said, with a wild glint in her eye, "Why wouldn't I be?"  
Raylan did as the lady wished and bought her another drink. "You know, if you're dying." Which felt unforgivably blunt, especially to someone who'd made him blush like a Boy Scout, but one of the great things about Anya was how she seemed past offense.

"Well, I haven't bought my plot yet or anything, but thirty years doesn't seem like long enough. And soon, Xander is going to want to marry me, or something, because he really is only human. And I love Xander and he's fun to interlock body parts with...I don't know if I've mentioned that."

"Repeatedly," Raylan said, and squirmed a little, for when the ex-demon had been drinking some of her descriptions got so graphic, he didn't know whether to be horrified or fascinated. He had to admit he was usually caught somewhere between the two, and that it was more pleasant to be there than he might expect. Anya hadn't noticed his discomfort either, focused as she was on something only she could see above her head. "Be that as it may," she continued, "if Xander also lived for thirty or forty years also, that could be hundreds of thousands of couplings."

Raylan considered the couples he knew and thought about asking if the ex-demon's math might be off, just a touch. But he just nodded as if to say "Ok, I can buy that."  
"Well, don't you think that could be a little..."

And they both said "boring," so Raylan bought Anya a coke, too, in between being shocked at himself.


	24. Crazy(Last Fling, Part Two)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raylan sometimes can't stay out of trouble.

"So, I've been thinking," the ex-demon said, but with a glint in her eye that made Raylan doubt the "ex" thing, "Of doing some research. And I guess I can end your suspense...you'll do."

"I'm sorry?" Raylan felt that he'd had more whiskey than he'd intended. "Could you repeat the question, please?"  
"I'll copulate with you. as a sort of comparison-contrast." And that glint worked its way through Raylan's bloodstream in the way that the impersonal way she spoke wouldn't, but still, somehow, her being so blunt didn't sit right. Raylan never figured himself for the hearts-and-flowers type, even when not in the bag and thinking about cheating on somebody he'd got Helen's ring for, but there it was.

"Your approach needs work." he said, but with a smile, in case she wasn't shed of all of her demon magic . On top of everything he didn't need to be cursed.

Raylan slid across the banquette thing, knowing he was doing wrong, but unable to stop himself. Maybe he was cursed already. The short walk across the room to the jukebox kinda cleared his head and he was almost relieved when the machine wouldn't take his wrinkled five. But then, Jen showed up, strangely perky for a woman working late hours in a devil costume and gave him a smooth one, just before he could take it as a sign and go home to Buffy and go to sleep.  
Instead, he punched in some Patsy Cline. He figured Anya would like Patsy, the way her voice seemed both young and alive and yet ghostly. He wondered if that was maybe how being a demon felt, but he supposed he didn't have the right to ask. " Dance with me," he asked, and he took her hand. "It's one way we find...interlocking partners," The machine started with "Crazy" first and Raylan kissed Anya's neck and decided he was done looking for signs. Because it was. As awkward as she was talking, she was smooth on the dance floor, as if she'd been been dancing for a hundred years. Maybe she had.

Then, it got later, and they had to think of a neutral place to go...finish their experiment. He actually did "get a room", after telling Buffy that patrol ran late.(That moment, brief at the time, haunted him afterwards, and only partially because he was skimping on hunting demons in a hellmouth and spending money he really didn't have for a motel. It wasn't like they could go back to her place-- Xander might be there. Which she seemed unfazed by, although it was true, he followed her around like a sad little puppy.  
But soon there was kissing, and touching, and no thoughts of anything but this tiny, smelly( a previous tenant had broken a bottle of aftershave and the heavy, fake-rustic scent lingered there like bad dreams) motel room. He expected it to be awkward, being their first(and only, he sternly reminded himself) time together, but she took to his body like she was made for it, without all the reassurance and sweet talk Buffy seemed to want, even now, after they had hunted actual demons together.  
This evening with Anya didn't mean anything, but he wasn't going to have to install guardrails in her mother's bathroom, either. He didn't have to care if she had a mother, or if she lost weight, or what she was thinking, although it had seemed that she'd enjoyed Patsy Cline.  
But now, it was all about her full mouth on his cock.


	25. Haunted and Hunted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are coming to roost for Raylan... can he protect the people he cares about?

After a long night of interlocking in various ways, some he expected, and some that surprised and even shocked him, Raylan fell into a heavy sleep and awoke a few hours later, cotton-mouthed and confused, with a beautiful ex-demon half-naked and asleep beside him.  
 _Shit, I didn't just dream that._  
And what was worse, he could see from the light that came in under the curtains that it was well into morning and he didn't think he could pass off the marks that might be on his skin as signs of patrol. Just when he thought things couldn't get any worse, although he felt a certain boyish satisfaction when he saw how much he wore out Anya,but,he heard the cheap windows rattle, and he tensed, wondering if he should have brought in his gun, or the stake Buffy lent him on patrol nights

. Suddenly, a familiar form slithered through the window and plopped on the bed. Anya mumbled in her sleep and made a face and a tiny motion that caused the silky gown she was wearing to ride up a little on her creamy-white thigh. Relief, confusion, hate, and some leftover Jack all raced through Raylan's system as he thought "How could she sleep through that?"

"Boyd," Raylan said. "What in the ever-loving hell are you doing here?"

"Looking after some business...looks like you're doing all right for yourself, there, Raylan." Boyd said and smirked. "You never could spot when I was following you...that's a real blind spot you got there, Mr. Givens."

Anya awoke fully, leaned on her elbow and blinked at both of them, almost as if she wasn't wearing something the world could see through and hadn't been dead to the world not ten minutes before. "Hello...are you here to interlock with us?"

"If I could understand what you were talking about, I'm sure you made a real tempting suggestion there, sweetheart." Crowder smiled his wolf's smile and Raylan felt instantly clear and strong, all of the nonsense from the night before flushed from his system. He got up and pulled on his pants and shirt. "Never mind that. Ahn, darlin', could you give me a moment to talk to my friend from back home in private?"

"Never mind," she said huffily. "It's not like I was really saying you were homosexual...it's just for the sake of my sample size."

"Still know how to pick 'em as ever," Crowder observed, his eyes shining with amusement."Wait till I tell Ava her hero's just a mortal man and not at all immune to his baser instincts."

"I still got a few more instincts than you. And one of 'em reminds me that the Boyd Crowder I know keeps his money in a coffee can. What kind of business brings you to the Golden State?"  
"I guess you could call it a research venture. But my young vendor has gone missing, and I need someone like you to go find him...Warren is not the type to just vanish.


	26. Homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even feeling guilty, Raylan can't let Joyce down.

Raylan knew that he must of smelled like an unmade bed, besides not coming home the night before. The hotel shower had iffy water pressure and the water was too cold for anything but a quick whore's bath, but he had to warn Buffy's family, even on a day when calling it a whore's bath was more accurate than not. Still, he had to steel his courage before knocking onthat familiar door. His heart gave him an additional pang when it was Joyce, still looking pale and leaning on her walker, who answered the door.

He halfway expected she'd know what he'd been up to and order him from the house, but she smiled warmly and without suspicion. "You just missed Buffy."

"Where'd she go?" he asked, more to make conversation than because he wanted to see her just yet.  
For a moment, Joyce looked sad, but it was so brief Raylan could tell himself he imagined it, even as he wondered if she was sad for him or herself. "Beats me." she said. "I was just about to have some coffee. And maybe a tiny sliver of pound cake to keep my strength."

"I'll get it." Raylan felt more at home in this kitchen, just about the time he figured he might not see it again. He cut Joyce a generous slice, saying "Life's too short, " and she blushed. But he was just talking about cake. They ate in silence for a while, before Raylan told himself to get with it and tell her why he was here. 

"Ms. Joyce, do you have anywhere out of town that you and Little Bit could stay for a while? You know, what with the fella Dawnie shot and all."

"Now, Raylan, you know the police dropped those charges, but yes, I have a sister in Chicago."

"Call her and tell her you're coming, please. Soon as you can make arrangements."

"In the middle of the semester? And I've just barely started working half-days at the gallery without people tearing up every time they see me--I really would like to reconnect with Nancy again, but the timing is kind of bad...sweet of you to care so much, though."

She smiled, and Raylan felt like banging his head on the table in frustration, but he took a deep breath and carried on. "This has got nothing to do with my being sweet. Boyd Crowder hired that Warren to build his...well, never mind. But just trust me that Boyd will not be stopped by a piece of paper like the law."

"How do you know all this?"

"He's in town. And we grew up together."

"Well, couldn't you talk to him? If he's anything like you..."  
"He's not." he said, shortly, and wondered if he lied.


	27. My Kind Of Town?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raylan gets restless on his mission of mercy.

While they were talking about it, Buffy came home. Raylan forced himself to greet her and kiss her cheek when he couldn't meet her eye."Xander said patrolling got pretty heavy the other night...you weren't hurt, were you?"  
It stung, getting an alibi from the boy he cuckolded."Nah--just freaked. Buffy, pack a bag. I'm gonna take you to your aunt's in Chicago."

"Is there, like a question in there?" Buffy asked. "Cause all I hear is lots of orders. Xander also wants to know when we can have a couples' dinner with him and Anya."She thought she knew why he looked pained, and said "She's not so bad. She just gets..excited. Or at least that's what I try to tell myself." Against his will, he got an impression of her strong thighs riding his body, her flushed face looking into his. "You may have something there," he said and the forbidden images passed.  
Raylan was ahead of her, trying to pack an overnight bag full of her old sweaters from high school and washed-out bras she bought when she didn't have an ancient destiny. "I don't know about that. You should be getting ready so we can leave as soon as Dawn gets here."

Buffy thrust out a defiant chin. He loved it when she was feisty, but she didn't seem to understand. "I've never run from a fight and I'm not about to start now."

"You don't know what Boyd's capable of. Besides, you don't know what it's like to face off to the death with somebody with a soul. You know, these ears don't just hold my hat up. For the record, I have." And his face turned serious.  
During the three days trapped in his truck with her and Dawnie, who, far from being afraid seemed to regard their journey as a high-stakes, exciting road trip. She chattered and lived on Pepsi and Red Vines from morning till night .Raylan thought he might stroke out if he didn't get some time alone very soon. He thought he'd get relief when they finally arrived at Buffy's aunt's place, if only because Dawn had finally fallen asleep and was looking deceptively angelic with her head resting on her jacket against the truck door.  
Miss Joyce's sister was not really a restful type, though she made decent pork chops the first night.She'd been recently divorced, like Miss Joyce, and she looked stressed often, and was always asking for a man's opinion about everything.


	28. Expect the Unexpected

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raylan finds out his home turf's in crisis.

They went to Lake Michigan, and every time Raylan saw a blonde woman he thought of Ava. Which made for a long day, but not in the same way as thinking about Anya.They're gone later than they planned, with one thing and another, and it's fully dark by the time Raylan guides everyone back to the suburbs. His Initiative training told him that was a failure, but his hill country upbringing told him a few things about cabin fever. And it was nice, he had to admit, being anonymous and sociable, eating garbage and not worrying about demons and whatnot.

In a flash, he saw what Buffy had to give up, and it gave him a pang.

Maybe that's why he didn't hear the crunching of shoes on the driveway, or notice that one of the window frames was askew. Maybe it was just because he could hear Buffy chatter and laugh like the college girl she still was, at least on paper, although it was hard to imagine the world ever being safe enough for her to resume her studies.

He tried not to think of his own forgotten thesis.Maybe they could both finish online one day.Despite being glad of being in her good graces, he was still lone-wolf enough to be relieved when the slayer headed off into the bathroom to shower(and not yet confident enough of appearing like the faithful boyfriend to join her, either.

He stepped into the guest room, belatedly noticing the window open wide. "Well, Raylan," said Boyd's familiar voice. "Don't you know, if you wanted to get me into bed, all you had to do was ask?" It wasn't so much that Boyd represented a huge threat, despite being batshit crazy and quite literally possessed of an explosive temperament. What chapped Raylan's ass was the way he sat there, enjoying it all. His eyes were practically sparkling with amusement, not that one year in California was sufficient to make him an expert on other fellows' eyes.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Connections at the department of Motor Vehicles."

Raylan snorted. "Like you have a friend in the world--what'd you do, blackmail some poor secretary or something?"

Crowder smiled. Not his full wolfish grin, more like an indulgent smirk. "Hellmouth living has made you ugly, Raylan Givens. I shudder to think what it will do for life in the holler. May be the most destabilizing influence since The War Between The States. Besides, you were my friend once, remember?"

"Vaguely." Raylan replied. "Just enough to know that neither one of us has any business letting the coal companies off the hook."  
"When you're right, you're right."

 

"You're too dramatic. Ain't nothing to the door to this place and you had to shimmy through the window...did you say there's a hellmouth in the holler?"


	29. Hard To Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy and Raylan start to face their separate destinies

Raylan didn't tell Buffy anything.In fact, he was so consumed with getting back to Kentucky, he barely thought of her until the private jet Boyd Crowder finessed at O'Hare was somewhere over what a filmstrip of their youth might call "America's Breadbasket"

"How did you get this thing again?" Raylan asked.

"An associate of mine ran afoul of the authorities in Colombia. Pharmaceutical reps have a rough time there, Raylan. By god, we ought to thank our lucky stars for the opportunities afforded by this great nation."  
Feeling that Boyd had a way of making even patriotism off-putting, Raylan just grunted and pulled his hat down over his eyes. He might have even slept a little, since he hadn't been doing that much, but anxiety about Harlan and the novelty of flying on leather seats had him all worked up."Assuming you're right about this demonic convergence thing-which I'm not sayin' you are by the way, what are we gonna use to fight it? Our good looks?" And he supposed, a few stakes he thrust into his shaving kit.

"You always were a flatterer,Raylan." Maybe the weirdest thing about this whole experience was seeing Boyd so in-charge and happy. It was like a strange dream. Still, it was a much better dream than the one where Buffy found out about Anya. "But our pulchritude will not come into play. Kentucky now has a by-God vampire slayer. And she works for me."

"Wait, but that's impossible."

"I know you want to think of me as somebody who can't rise above where he was raised, but Audrey's does a brisk business. At the risk of being ungentlemanly, I can only assume Miss Faith's...talents play a pivotal role."  
"Ok, so the new slayer is a prostitute...only in Harlan. Besides, I thought there was only one." And she was about to wake up to a Doublemeat Palace napkin with "I'll Be Back" block-printed on it. Raylan winced. First, the married man, now he was bugging out. Buffy deserved better.

"You shouldn't be so eager to reduce people to their jobs. For instance, I know you are still a fierce fighter despite wasting time on dubious intellectual pursuits."

"Careful, there, Boyd--you almost tripped up on a compliment."

"I've got no problem with giving the devil his due."

And then Raylan did sleep until they landed.  
***  
Meanwhile, in the Chicago suburbs, the Slayer, the Chosen One, battling with dark forces, was burning through her Friends and Family minutes(and her Aunt Kris' patience) crying over a man in her guest bathroom. "I'm sure he didn't just leave, Buffy." Willow said, for what seemed like the millionth time. "I'm sure he had reasons." Willow was feeling secure about love with Tara nuzzling her neck.

"He was supposed to be my normal guy, okay, so he's the last guy to tip a hat in California since about 1910, but he's not supposed to have reasons."  
Willow tried to be patient, because she remembered what a wreck she was after the whole thing with Oz, but she felt herself sigh anyway. "Buffy, everyone has reasons."


	30. Harlan, Alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raylan gets some questions answered before fighting evil on his home turf.

When the jet touched down, Raylan woke, alert, but still halfway lost in a dream featuring Dawn at the moment when she found out the harm that a gun could do.  
He turned to Boyd and said "Before I help you fight this thing, Boyd."

"It seems to me, compadre, the time to negotiate was...pre-boarding."

"Never mind that. Did you send Warren to Revello Drive?" Raylan asked, the name feeling so foreign on his tongue already it was hard to believe he had a coffee mug there, much less anything else.

"Raylan, you know me," Boyd, expansive, despite what looked like actual fear in his eyes. "If I send someone, you'd know it. Wouldn't you say so?" 

"Generally, I'd say yes." Raylan looked over at Boyd. "You really don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"

"Well, it is true, Raylan, that I had purchased some of the man's handicrafts... but apart from that, we had no further intercourse."

"You mean that you bought some robots--you'll excuse me if I don't worry about the folks you have intercourse with?"

"So, what happened?" Boyd asked. "Once that man...Warren, was it, showed up at your friend's house?" His eyes shone as though he expected a ripping good yarn, which somehow made Raylan want to say it plain as possible. 

"We took care of it. I know that was weighing on your mind."

"Your welfare is paramount, Raylan." He indicated a brunette wearing pants that didn't leave a lot to the imagination, and said "This is Faith."

Out of habit, he touched the brim of his hat to her, feeling that she was somehow familiar."Faith. You sent me texts, didn't you?"

"Yeah...we were in a spot," she said. "Up Shit's Holler without a paddle. Why didn't you come?"

"Your texts and Art's got garbled. Sent on top of each other sometimes. Then, things in California got...complicated..."  
"Yeah." Faith said. "They do that."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the Buffistas for the beta and the validation(Necessary with such a crazy idea.)


End file.
